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THE INVASION 
OF AMERICA 

A FACT STORY BASED ON THE IN- 
EXORABLE MATHEMATICS OF WAR 

BY 

JULIUS W. MULLER 

Author of "The A. B. C. of Preparedness." 




NEW YORK 
E. P. BUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 
1916 



A%' 



*>£* 



Copyright, 1915 
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 



ii 



~i/fc 



OEC 27 1915 



©CU420086 



PEEFACE 

In January, 1915, Mr. G. T. Viskniskki, man- 
ager of The Wheeler Syndicate, asked me: 
"Assuming that an enemy landed an army on 
the American coast, what could we actually do 
with our actual present resources used to their 
fullest possible extent 1 ' ' 

This story was written as the answer. 

I hesitated a long time before I did it. I 
feared and fear still the dangers to which the 
possession of military power drives Nations, 
and which are particularly great in the case of 
a Kepublic. The obvious danger that a Nation 
like ours if powerfully armed may be too easily 
impelled to war, is great enough. But still 
more grave is the danger of a deep and fatal 
change in our National spirit, our ideals and 
our attitudes toward the world outside of our 
own borders. 

Therefore when I did write the story I did 
it with no unworthy design, and not for the 



PREFACE 

sake of taking advantage of the popular inter- 
est in the subject. 

The story was written without any idea of 
suggesting that any Nation or group of Na- 
tions may mean to attack us. It was written 
with no desire to " scare' ' the people of the 
United States into giving thought to the army 
and navy. I should hold it a sad reflection on 
our country to assume that it must be aroused 
by terror or hatred into setting its house in 
order. 

I beg my readers to accept the story in this 
spirit. There are eight words, uttered by one 
of the greatest of simple men. They are: 
"With malice toward none, with charity to- 
ward all." Let that spirit dominate whatever 
this Nation may do for military Preparedness, 
and there will be no danger that the Prepared- 
ness shall become Bellicosity and curse the 
land. 

As to the story itself, I need say only that 
I have tried scrupulously to avoid twisting any 
fact to prove a point ; and I have cited no fact, 
even the most unimportant, without verifying 
it by reference to the original source. The de- 
scription of the method of attack by the invad- 



PREFACE 

ing foreign armies is not based on any of the 
conflicting tales that have come to ns from the 
European scene of war. In fact, the present 
war has been almost ignored. The foreign 
army statistics and other facts are based on 
undoubtedly authoritative official and semi-offi- 
cial publications issued during times of peace, 
on a study of the great peace maneuvers, and 
on information possessed by our own military 
experts. 

Similarly, in treating of our own army and 
its situation I abstained wholly from using any 
of the tempting material that has been made so 
freely available since the beginning of the agi- 
tation for military preparedness, and have 
used, instead, the simple and surely unbiassed 
facts presented to Congress in responsible offi- 
cial reports before the European War centered 
American interest on our own condition. 

The book will demonstrate for itself that the 
" story element'' is not made to depend on in- 
vented battles or imagined catastrophes. Fac- 
ing the fact that war is an iron game, wherein 
the moves are predicated inexorably on the 
possession of the material in men and appli- 
ances, the fiction takes no liberties save in try- 



PEEFACE 

ing to present a living picture of what such a 
war, falling on an army so unprepared, will be 
in such a country as ours. 

The technical soundness of the book is left 
by me to the verdict of technical experts. The 
story was planned, drafted, written and re- 
written with the benefit of unusually authorita- 
tive assistance and under technical cooperation 
rarely granted to books of this nature. My 
thanks are due to men who gave freely of their 
knowledge, professional ability and time with- 
out even asking that credit should be given to 
them in return. 

The Author. 



INTEODUCTION 

Let us be safe rather than sorry! Every 
scene so graphically described by the writer of 
this book will find its duplicate in the mind of 
the reader who has kept himself informed of the 
occurrences in the European fields of war. 

In war the law of Nations, conserving the 
laws of humanity, is superseded by the law of 
necessity which is invoked and interpreted as to 
life and property by the belligerent concerned, 
to excuse every act committed. 

Four years of costly and exhausting Civil 
War found us able to mass on the Mexican bor- 
der a magnificently trained and virile army to 
execute our mandate of withdrawal (under the 
Monroe Doctrine) of a so-called Kuler by Divine 
Eight and his government sustained by foreign 
arms. From that task the Civil War armies of 
both sides, trained to look with contempt upon 
obstacles hitherto regarded as insurmountable, 
turned and accomplished the construction of 
trans-Continental railroads that would not 



INTEODUCTION 

otherwise have been built for another genera- 
tion, thus inaugurating an era of unparalleled 
national development. 

The war in Europe, once ended, will likewise 
find such virile armies with warships and trans- 
port service comparatively unimpaired and ag- 
gregating, as to the latter, millions of net tons. 

The teaching of history shows that so long as 
human nature remains unchanged, war cannot 
be eliminated as a factor in human affairs. 
Meanwhile, and doubtless for centuries to fol- 
low, war is inevitable as a recurrent consequence 
of the ceaseless operation of an inexorable law 
of progress toward world unity under that ulti- 
mate governmental form that shall approach 
nearest to the laws of humanity and righteous- 
ness. 

As our own experience in the Spanish- Ameri- 
can war abundantly proves, intervening oceans 
lost to our command by reason of the insufficient 
strength of our navy, offer no obstacles to the 
landing on our shore of a first armed enemy re- 
lay sufficient to secure a gateway through which 
others would rapidly follow. To this we should 
be able to oppose only an available mobile force 
— at present little more than double the police 



INTRODUCTION 

force which is deemed somewhat inadequate to 
preserve order and protect life and property in 
the City of New York. 

This book thus simply stages here in New 
England, the heart of our industrial efficiency 
for war or peace, scenes the counterpart of 
those occurring abroad from day to day, against 
the actual happening of which in our own land 
there now intervenes a wholly inadequate navy 
and but the skeleton of an army, as in the days 
of the late Thomas Nast. 1 

John A. Johnston, 
Brigadier General U. S. Army (Resigned) ; 
President Army League of the U. S. 

Washington, D. C. November 1, 1915. 

iThe reader will recall Nast's skeleton representing the 
Regular Army with the legend, "Match it for grit if you 
can " or words to that effect. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTEB 

I The Beginnings . 

II The Coast Bombarded . 

III The Landing .... 

IV The Coast Defenses Fall 
V New England's Battle 

VI The Rising of New England 

VII The Investment of Boston 

VIII Defending Connecticut 

IX The Capture of New York City 

X The Price That Had to Be Paid 



page 
1 

24 

58 
100 
135 
167 
201 
238 
268 
315 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



"It Was Not Because They Knew How to Fight; 
It Was Because They Meant to Stay There Till 
They Died" Frontispiece 

"Days Before, the American Fleet Had Steamed 
Out of Long Island Sound" facing 14- 

" There Were Ships Moving Toward the Long 
Island Coast as if to Threaten New York" ... 28 ' 

"There in Connecticut Lay the Army. . . . Miles 
of Tents Separated by Geometrically Straight 
Rows of Company Streets" 33 

"Up Mounted a Hydro- Aeroplane " 46 

"The Dragons of Twelve-Inch Mortars that 
Squatted in Hidden Pits" 48" 

"Destroyers Moved Straight for the Harbor in a 
Long Line" 60 

"He Steered His Craft, Awash, from Behind 
Fisher's Island, at Dawn" 83 

"For Miles Beyond that the Enemy's Patrols Had 
Occupied Points ..." 92 

They Flew over the Tall Municipal Building of 
New York" 100 

The Efficient, Prepared, Resourceful Invader Was 
Landing His Army, Not Only Without Losing a 
Man, but Without Getting a Man's Feet Wet" . 109- 



a 



a 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

"The Forward Turret of a Battleship Turned and 
Spoke with a Great Voice 129 

"The People Had Gone out to Tear Up the Rail- 
road Tracks Leading into the Town" 152 

"Entirely Raw Volunteers, Who Had Everything 
to Learn" 160 - 

"There Had Been Firing from Mill-Buildings, 
Which Had Been Destroyed for Punishment" . 183 

"The Quick Searchlights Caught the Ships" ... 208 

"A Landing Was Attempted in Greater Force, 
with the Assistance of a Destroyer Division Ly- 
ing Close to the Beach" 213^ 

"The Country-Club Had Been Turned into a 
Brigade Headquarters" 243' 

"The Army of Madmen Went Forward to the Con- 
necticut River to Hold the Western Bank" . . 260 

" The Only Activity that Remained in Full Progress 
Was the Activity of the Bulletin-Boards" ... 291 

"The Big Guns Behind Them Made No Despi- 
cable Sentinels" 331 



MAPS 
The Landing of the Enemy Forces 123 



Boston Harbor 201 

The Attack on the New York Defences 300 - 



THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

I 

THE BEGINNINGS 

"Washington, D. C, March 20.— The Presi- 
dent, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and 
Navy, has ordered a grand joint maneuver of 
the fleet, the regular army and the Organized 
Militia (National Guard) of Divisions 5, 6, 7, 
and 8, comprising New England, New York, 
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Mary- 
land, Virginia and West Virginia," 

No comment from official circles accompanied 
this dispatch when it was printed in the news- 
papers. None was needed. Ever since the 
Great Coalition had been formed, America had 
faced the probability of war. 

In the White House there was a conference 
of the Cabinet, attended by the Chief of Staff 
of the United States Army and the Admiral who 
was President of the General Board of the 
Navy. 



2 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

"The regular troops are moving,' ' reported 
the Chief of Staff. " Every last man of 'em is 
on the way east." He laughed grimly. "I 
take no credit for it. The trains of the country 
can do it without changing a schedule. Do you 
know, gentlemen, that even the smaller roads 
often handle an excursion crowd as big as this 
whole army of ours 1 ' ' * 

The Secretary of War shrugged his shoul- 
ders. "Despite all the talk of recent years, de- 
spite all our official reports, I doubt if the peo- 
ple realize it." 

"Make them!" said the President. "Drive 
it home to them, before war is brought to our 
coasts." He turned to the two chiefs of staff. 
"Give the newspapers a statement about the 
'maneuvers' that will give the public the cold 
truth." 

"The fleet," said the Admiral to the news- 
paper correspondents an hour later, "is as- 
sumed to be an enemy fleet too powerful for 
opposition. It will attempt to land at least 
100,000 fighting forces somewhere on the At- 
lantic Coast. It is conceded that an actual 
enemy planning invasion would not come with 

i Statement based on statistics. 



THE BEGINNINGS 3 

less than that number. It is conceded also that 
a sufficiently powerful fleet can transport that 
number, and more, safely across the ocean. 
The Navy, further, concedes the landing." 2 

What Our Harbor Defenses Cannot Prevent 

"But our coast defenses, Admiral !" spoke 
the correspondent of a Boston newspaper. 
"We've been told that those affairs with their 
monster 12-inch rifled steel cannon and their 
12-inch mortar batteries, and mines and things, 
are as powerful as any in the world, and can 
stand off any fleet ! ' ' 

"They are not coast defenses, sir," answered 
the Chief of Staff. * l They are harbor defenses. 
They can stop warships from entering our great 
harbors. They cannot prevent an enemy from 
landing on the coast out of their range. And 
on the Atlantic Coast of the United States there 
are hundreds of miles of utterly undefended 
beach where any number of men can land as 
easily as if they were trippers landing for a 
picnic. All those miles of shore, and all the 
country behind them, lie as open to invasion," 
he held out his hand, "as this." 

2 Authorities concede these matters. 



4 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

"Then what's the use of them?" 

"They furnish a protected harbor within 
which our own navy could take refuge if de- 
feated or scattered, r ' said the Admiral. ' ' They 
make our protected cities absolutely secure 
against a purely naval attack. No navy could 
readily pass the defenses, and probably none 
would venture so close as even to bombard them 
seriously. Certainly no fleet could bombard the 
cities behind them. 

"Therefore," he continued, "if an enemy 
wishes to bring war to us, he must land an army 
of invasion. Our harbor defenses force him to 
do that; but — having forced him to bring the 
army, their function ceases. They cannot pre- 
vent him from landing it. We have to do that 
with our army. ' ' 

"And could you stop him, or is that a mili- 
tary secret?" asked one of the party. He did it 
tentatively. He had been a war correspondent 
with foreign armies, and he did not expect a 
reply. 

31,000 Men — Our Actual Mobile Army 

"My dear boy," answered the Chief of Staff 
promptly, "there probably isn't a General Staff 



THE BEGINNINGS 5 

in the world that doesn't know all about us, to 
the last shoe on the last army mule. We 've got 
88,000 men in the regular army, officers and 
privates. 3 Of these, you may count out 19,000. 
They are non-combatants — cooks, hospital 
staffs, teamsters, armorers, blacksmiths, and 
all the other odds and ends that an army must 
have, but can't use for fighting. Now, cut out 
another 21,000 men. Those are fighting men, 
but they're not here. They're in Panama, 
Hawaii, the Philippines, China and Alaska — and 
we wish that we had about three times as 
many there, especially in Panama. How much 
does that leave? Forty-eight thousand? Very 
well. That's what we've got here at home. 
But you'll please count out another 17,000. 
They're in the Coast Artillery, and have to 
man the harbor defenses of which we've been 
talking. Now you've got our mobile army — 
the actual force that we can put into the field 
and move around. Thirty-one thousand men. ' ' 
"A pretty straight tip," agreed the Wash- 
ington correspondents when they left the War 
Department. And as a straight tip they passed 
it on to their readers. So the Nation read the 

3 See War Department Reports, 1915. 



6 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

next morning how their army was being made 
ready. They read how four companies of one 
infantry regiment were gathered from Fort 
Lawton in Washington and another four com- 
panies from Fort Missoula in Montana. They 
read how still four other companies of 
the same regiment were at Madison Barracks 
in New York State. 4 

Their fifth Cavalry regiment, they learned, 
was being assembled like a picture puzzle by 
sending to Fort Myer, Virginia, for four troops 
of it, to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, for four more 
troops and a machine-gun platoon, and to Fort 
Leavenworth, Kansas, for the remaining four 
troops needed to form a full regiment. 

There was field artillery whose component 
units were scattered, guns, horses and men, from 
the Vermont line to the Rio Grande. There 
were signal troops in Alaska, Texas, the Philip- 
pines and Panama. 

This was no such mobilization as that giant 
mobilization in Europe when a continent had 
stood still for days and nights while the soldiers 

* Taken from actual stations of various troops at various 
times. The army post system is considered indefensible 
among military men. 



THE BEGINNINGS 7 

moved to their appointed places. So far 
scattered was the American army, so small 
were its units, that only a few civilians here and 
there could have noticed that troops were being 
moved at all. 

More than one un-military citizen, looking 
over his newspaper that morning, cursed the 
politics that had maintained the absurd, worth- 
less, wasteful army posts, and cursed himself 
for having paid no heed in the years when 
thoughtful men had called on him and his fel- 
lows to demand a change. . 

More than one citizen, when he left his house 
to go to his accustomed work, looked up at the 
sky and wondered, with a sinking heart, how 
soon it would seem black with war. 

A Dreadnaught For Every Effective American 

Ship 

It was a peaceful, soft sky, with baby clouds 
sleeping on its bland, blue arch. It radiated a 
tranquil warmth of coming spring; and under 
it the Atlantic Ocean lay equally peaceful, 
equally soft, equally tranquil. 

Yet even as the people of America were tak- 
ing up the day's work, under that soft, tranquil 



8 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

sea a message was darting through the en- 
crusted cables that swept away all peace. 

Before noon, from sea to sea and from lakes 
to gulf, from the valley of the Hudson to the 
sierras of the Rockies, from Jupiter Inlet to 
the Philippines, ran the silent alarm of the tele- 
graph that the Great Coalition had declared 
War! 

Forty-eight hours later the combined battle- 
fleet of the four Nations put to sea with its 
army transports, bound for the American 
coast. 5 

The United States learned of its departure 
before its rear-guard had well cleared the land. 
The news did not come from American spies. 
It came from the Coalition itself. 

War, the Chameleon, as Clausewitz called it, 
was presenting a new aspect of its unexpected 
phases. Not a cable had been cut following the 
declaration of war; and now the submarine 
cables and the wireless began to bring official 
news from the enemy — news addressed not to 
the American government, but to the American 
people. 

s Speed of embarkation of a mobilized and prepared army 
as calculated by European military staff officers. 



THE BEGINNINGS 9 

It was news that told of an invulnerable fleet 
carrying more than a thousand rifled cannon of 
the largest caliber ever borne by ships in all 
the world. It told of enough battleships alone 
(and named them) to match the Bepublic's fleet 
with a dreadnaught for every effective Ameri- 
can ship of any kind. 6 

"Clever!" said the Secretary of State to the 
President. "It is Terrorism." 

"Don't you think that you'd better recon- 
sider your idea of letting this go through?" 
asked the Secretary of War. "It's pretty dan- 
gerous stuff." 

"It's the Nation's War," answered the Presi- 
dent. "Will it demoralize our people to know 
the truth, even under the guise of terrorism? 
Do you know in whose hands I'm going to leave 
that question?" 

"I can't guess," said the Secretary. 

"In the hands of the newspapers," replied 
the President. 

The newspapers did not require to be told 
that the purpose of this novel news service from 
the enemy was Terrorism. 

« One thousand rifled cannon could be enumerated from the 
naval lists of less than four Powers. Less than four Powers 
could match our Navy with battleships. 



10 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

They answered Terrorism by Printing The 

News. 

The Battle That Was Decided Years Before 

Then the sea-coast cities began to call to 
Washington. By telegraph and telephone they 
demanded protection. It was a chorus from 
Maine to Georgia. Into the White House 
thronged the Congressmen. 

"Defend us! Defend our people! Defend 
our towns ! ' ' said they. 7 

"We cannot do it!" said the Chief of Staff. 
"No wit of man can guess at what point of 
many hundred miles the enemy will strike. He 
may land on the New Jersey coast to take Phila- 
delphia. He may land on Long Island to march 
at New York. He may strike at Boston. He 
may land between Boston and New York, on 
the Rhode Island or Massachusetts coasts, and 
keep us guessing whether he'll turn west to New 
York or east to Boston. He may even strike 
for both at once, from there." 

"Then why not put men into each place to 
protect it?" demanded a Congressman. "Are 

7 This is exactly what happened during the Spanish-Ameri- 
can War. 



THE BEGINNINGS 11 

these great cities to be left wide open?" 
"You know how many regulars we've got. 
Do you know how many effective men we've 
pulled together by calling out those eastern di- 
visions of organized militia? Their enrolled 
strength is 50,000 men. Their actual active 
strength as shown by attendance figures has 
been only about 30 per cent, of that ; but we were 
lucky. 8 This danger has brought out all, prob- 
ably, that were able to come. Still, there are 
less than 30,000 men ; and not quite half of those 
have had good field training. We need them. 
We need them so badly that we 're putting them 
all in the first line. But it's a little bit like — 
well, it's murder." 

"Then you mean to say — !" The Congress- 
man was aghast. 

"I mean to say," answered the Chief of 
Staff, with a set face, "that the army is going 
to take what it has, and do its best. But it's go- 
ing to do it in its own way. No enemy will 
dream of landing an invading army unless it is 
decisively, over-poweringly superior to our 
own. Now, Congressman, the only way for an 

s From U. S. War Department Reports for 1915 on Militia 
Organization. 



12 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

inferior army to accomplish anything is to re- 
fuse battle until the chances are as favorable as 
they can be made. The inferior force must re- 
tire before a superior. It must force the in- 
vader to follow till he is weakened by steadily 
lengthening lines of communications. His dif- 
ficulties of food- and ammunition-transport 
grow. He becomes involved in strange terrain. 
Last but not least, he gets more and more deeply 
into a land filled with a hostile population. But 
if we must defend a specific place at all haz- 
ards, then we must stand and give battle — well, 
it will be only one battle. ' ' 

"You mean—?" 

"I mean that such a battle is decided already. 
It was decided years ago — when the country 
refused to prepare." 

"Good God, man!" The Congressman 
wiped his forehead with a trembling, fat 
hand. "I can't go back and tell my people 
that" 

"You'd better not," said the General, grimly. 

No Men to Defend the Harbor Works 

The unhappy man, and other unhappy men 
like him, went back to their constituencies know- 



THE BEGINNINGS 13 

ing that now no campaign oratory would serve. 
Soften the news they must, and would ; but they 
were the bearers of ill tidings, and they knew 
what comes to these. 

The stricken cities heard. From all the great 
coast with its piled gold and silver, there arose 
a cry. Men shook their fists and cursed the 
machinery of politics that had worked through 
the blind years to hinder, to deceive and to 
waste. The Pork Barrel ceased all at once to 
be the great American joke. 

i t Throw men into our harbor defenses ! ' ' cried 
the cities of the coast. "Hold them! Hold 
them ! ' ' 

"We have seventeen thousand trained regu- 
lars and 5,000 militia more or less experienced 
to handle these complex giants,' ' answered the 
Army, implacably. "There are 1,184 guns and 
mortars to handle. It leaves no men to defend 
the works. To throw the mobile army or any 
part of it into the defenses for mere protection 
is only to lock them up. The mobile army must 
defend the defenses from outside. If it cannot 
do it, they fall. ,,9 

9 This statement does not betray a military secret. It is 
well known to all foreign governments that we cannot defend 
our coast defenses against land attack. 



14 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

" Where is the mobile army?" cried the cities. 
"Send it here!" clamored each city. 

There was no reply. Somewhere behind the 
Atlantic Coast lay the mobile army, silent. 

The cities stared to sea. They listened for 
sounds from the sea. That serving ocean that 
had made them rich and great, had become sud- 
denly terrible, a secret place where there 
brooded wrath. Every day great multitudes, 
stirred by helpless, vague impulse, moved to- 
ward the waterfronts and gazed down the har- 
bors. Every rumble of blasts or heavy vehicle, 
every sudden great noise, startled the cities into 
a quick: "Listen! Cannons !" 

The News the Fleet Sent Bach 

"Where is the fleet?" The question ran 
from Maine to Florida, till it, too, became one 
great clamor, storming at the White House. 
Again there was no answer. 

Days before, the American fleet had steamed 
out of the eastern end of Long Island Sound. 
The tall, gray dreadnaughts and armored 
cruisers, each with its circling, savage brood of 
destroyers; light cruisers, torpedo boats, sea- 



THE BEGINNINGS 15 

going submarines, hospital ships, auxiliaries 
and colliers, one by one they had passed into the 
open sea and vanished. 

But though no man knew where it was, from 
its unknown place it spoke by wireless to Wash- 
ington, and through Washington to the Na- 
tion. 

From "somewhere between the Virginia 
Capes and the northern end of the Bahama Is- 
lands' ' where it lay, it had sent out its feelers 
across the sea toward the on-coming foe — swift 
gray feelers whose tall skeleton fire-control tops 
were white with watching sailors. And so, 
presently, between the enemy and the Ameri- 
can coast there lay a line of relays to catch 
the news and pass it on to the Nation and its 
fleet. 

More than a hundred miles of sea, said the 
news, were covered by the advancing fleet. It 
was a hundred miles of steel forts ; and outside 
of them, dashing back and forth in ceaseless 
patrol, were the lighter and faster craft, con- 
sisting of destroyers and small, swift cruisers. 

The scout cruiser Birmingham had spied 
ships inside even the inner line. But they 



16 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

were not transports. They were still war- 
ships. The troop transports were so far within 
all the protective cordons that the American 
scouts, lying far along the horizon, could not 
even sight their masts. 

The enemy fleet scarcely made an attempt to 
attack the spying vessels. It seemed almost 
that the enormous mass was too insolently sure 
of its power to trouble about the scouts. 

So, with watching cruisers and destroyers 
hanging to its sides day and night, the invaders' 
armada moved westward as steady as a life- 
less, wicked machine. Never varying their dis- 
tances or relative positions, never falling out of 
line, never altering their speed of 14 knots, the 
dreadnaughts and battle-cruisers guarded their 
precious transports, trusting to their outer cor- 
don to keep off all attacks. And the outer cor- 
don held true. 

It did not move slowly, majestically, like the 
armored line. Incessantly it swept back and 
forth, and in and out, patrolling the sea to a dis- 
tance so far from the battle-ships that the 
American scouts rarely could approach nearer 
than to sight, from their own tops, the tops of 
the dreadnaughts. 



THE BEGINNINGS 17 

The Message From the Kearsarge 

As the enemy covered the sea, so he filled the 
air. Constantly, all day long, floating and 
drifting with the soft white clouds far beyond 
the farthest extent of the cordon, his aeroplanes 
surveyed the water-world. And all day long, 
and all night long, the ships' wireless tore the 
air. 

The American wireless, too, played forth its 
electric waves of air night and day. From dar- 
ing scouts to relay-ships, and from relay-ships 
to hidden fleet and to waiting Nation, went the 
story out of the far sea. The American mil- 
lions knew the progress of the coming enemy 
as if the fleet were an army moving along a 
populous highway of the land. 

The Nation watched the implacable, remorse- 
less advance breathlessly, apprehensively; but 
behind its apprehension there was hope. 
"Surely, surely," men said to each other, "our 
splendid sailors will get at them!" 

Accustomed by its history to expect thrilling 
deeds of dash and enterprise that should wrest 
success out of disaster, the United States waited 
for The Deed. 



18 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

It came. Out of the far Atlantic came the 
story. It came from the battle-ship Kearsarge 
and went to the Chester, it was passed on by 
the Chester and picked up by the Tacoma, and 
the Tacoma tossed it into the air and sent it to 
the coast. 

" Engaged/ ' said the Kearsarge, "have — 
sunk, ' ' and then there came a break in the mes- 
sage. ' ' Destroyer — light — cruiser — ' ' spoke 
the wireless again, and stopped. " Armored — 
cruiser,' ' spoke the wireless again in half an 
hour. ' i Port — beam — disabled — withdrawing 
— pre-dreadnaught — abaft — starboard — beam 
— firing — 14,000 — yards — dreadnaught — port 
beam — " Again there came an abrupt check 
to the wireless. 

To the men on the fleet "somewhere off the 
Virginia Capes, ' ' and to the men in newspaper 
offices from ocean to ocean, it was as if they 
were witnessing the fight. Indeed, the presses 
had some of it printed and on the streets before 
the battle-ship's story was done. 

"Dreadnaught — " started the wireless 
again. ' ' 17,000 — yards — am struck — after — 
gun — upper — turret — am struck — forward — 



THE BEGINNINGS 19 

gun — lower — turret — dismounted — am struck 
— after — gun — lower — turret — ' ' 

The air fell silent. It was the last word from 
the Kearsarge. 

The Inevitable Order to an Inferior Fleet 

"As a man," said the Admiral that night to 
the correspondents who pressed him for an in- 
terview, "I am glad that the Kearsarge did it. 
As Admiral, I can only say that her destruction, 
old though she was, is a heavy loss to us that 
would not be balanced even if, besides the ships 
she sank, she had sunk both the dreadnaughts. 
We have ordered the fleet to keep itself in- 
tact." 

"Does that mean that there are to be no 
raids?" 

"It cannot be done," answered the Admiral. 
"With sufficient machinery, heroism can do 
great deeds to-day, as ever. Without the ma- 
chinery, it can only go down, singing. 10 The 

i° Certain naval experts, basing their opinion on study of 
the recent naval battles, claim that a difference of as little 
as 10 per cent, in efficiency between fleets otherwise abso- 
lutely equal means inevitable destruction for the inferior 
fleet. 



20 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

enemy transports are within an inmost line of 
great ships. At the margin of their zone of fire 
is another armored line of dreadnaughts. And 
the outer cordon is at the margin of that zone of 
fire. Thus one of our raiding ships would have 
to break through at least thirty miles, every 
inch of it under fire from half a dozen ships. It 
cannot be done. This enemy fleet could be 
broken only by brute force. To attack in force 
with our inferior fleet would mean simply that 
we should smash ourselves against him as un- 
availingly as if we smashed ourselves full speed 
ahead against a rocky coast.' ' 

"But surely at night our ships can dash in!" 
insisted the public, reluctant to give up roman- 
tic hopes. "Wait — and some night you will 
see!" 

Then there came a wireless relayed from the 
Conyngham, biggest and swiftest of the Ameri- 
can destroyer divisions. She had circled the 
whole enemy fleet, flying around it through days 
and nights at the full speed of her thirty knots. 
Her message told why there could be no raids 
at night. 

There was no night. All the sea, ran the 
Conyngham 9 s tale, was lit like a flaming city. 



THE BEGINNINGS 21 

The outer cordon played its search-lights far to- 
ward each horizon. It played other lights in- 
ward, toward its own battle-ships. And the 
line of battle-ships in turn, kept mighty search- 
lights, bow and stern, steadily on their trans- 
ports. 

Each transport had its guard, whose bright 
surveillance never shifted, never wavered, from 
dusk to dawn. These sentinel dreadnaughts 
never turned a search-light to sweep the sur- 
rounding sea. They held their transports 
steadily in the white glare. 

There was not an inch of ocean within their 
lines that was not ablaze. A fragment of drift- 
wood could not have floated into that vivid sea 
without being detected by a hundred eyes. 

The Invader Off the Coast 

Now the news came fast and faster, as the 
fleet, and its hovering spies, came nearer. 

The Alabama, sister-ship to the Kearsarge, 
by haphazard fortune got between two enemy 
scouts and the main fleet, and accomplished by 
sudden attack what she never could have ac- 
complished by speed. She sank them within 
twenty minutes, and returned without injury. 



22 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

It was 13-incli guns against 8-inch, and the story 
was as it always is. The inferior enemy ships 
went down like pasteboard, under the fire of 
the turret guns on the American vessel. 

On the same day, almost at the same hour, the 
scout cruiser Birmingham, at the other end of 
the enemy line, sent report that the destroyer 
Bainb ridge, tiniest of the division, had driven 
her two 18-inch torpedoes home and sunk an 
armored cruiser that had fallen out of line to 
repair some unknown injury to its machinery. 
The Bainbridge did not tell its own story. The 
little boat and her men were blasted into 
nothing within ten minutes by a battle-cruiser 
that had turned to protect her mate. 

These disasters, that might have been ap- 
palling to a lesser sea-power, left the great navy 
of the Coalition unshaken. Steadily, imperturb- 
ably, it kept on its way. 

So there came the day when coasters and 
small craft sped wildly into the shelter of Bos- 
ton and New York Harbors, into Long Island 
Sound and into the Delaware and Chesapeake 
Bays. They had seen the enemy. 

Next morning, in a gray, transparent, peace- 
ful April dawn, watchers on the coast, gazing 



THE BEGINNINGS 23 

across the empty, flat Atlantic, to the immense 
half-circle of the horizon, saw innumerable tiny 
objects just sticking up above the rim of the 
sea. Through the glass they seemed to be little 
perches of skeleton iron built in the deep ocean. 

Set at beautifully precise distances apart, 
they dotted the sharply outlined edge of water 
and sky, north and south, far beyond vision. 

Innocent and quiet they appeared, as they 
stood there, growing slowly, very slowly, up 
out of the far sea. 

And the roaring presses, spouting forth extra 
editions east, west, north and south, told the 
United States of America : 

INVADER APPEARS OFF AMERICAN COAST 



II 

THE COAST BOMBARDED 

Never, even in after years, was it determined 
whence the news of the enemy ships came first. 
Almost as easily might a land invaded by 
locnsts have decided what eye first saw the 
coming cloud, or at what precise spot. 

" Warship on horizon. Standing in. 
Slowly.' ' It came from the keeper of Peaked 
Hill Bar Life-Saving Station at the far end of 
Cape Cod's sweeping sand-arm. From the 
crest of the Navesink Highlands, standing steep 
ont of the Atlantic at New York's harbor en- 
trance, men saw ships. On the high place their 
eyes commanded a view eighteen miles ont to 
sea. At that extreme distance were the tops 
of fighting craft, lying safely outside of the 
zone of fire from the big guns in Sandy Hook's 
harbor-defenses. 

From his lantern 163 feet high the light- 
house keeper of Barnegat on the New Jersey 

24 



THE COAST BOMBABDED 25 

coast, forty miles south of the Navesink, saw 
tops above his horizon. " Ships standing off 
here," came the word from Cape Ann, north of 
Boston. 

Philadelphia heard from Absecon Light and 
cried to Washington that the enemy was pre- 
paring to land on its coast. Boston cried to 
Washington for ships and men. New York 
telegraphed and telegraphed again and sent 
delegations on a special train. 

Washington faced the clamor, the appeals 
half-beseeching and half-furious, with a great 
stern aspect, new in a Eepublic wherein the 
rulers are the servants who must heed public 
demands. This coming invasion was unpro- 
voked. The Administration needed no party 
behind it now ; for it knew that this was to be a 
fight for life, and that only the sword could 
decide. And it had given the sword to the army 
and navy without conditions. 

"It is the least we can do," the President had 
said. "Long ago they warned the Nation. 
The Nation would not give them the tools they 
needed. Now that there is nothing left except 
to do their best, they shall be left to do it in 
their own way." 



26 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

So the word went abroad among the poli- 
ticians : ' ' The army and navy have the bit in 
their teeth/ ' And the politicians, once so 
powerful, went helplessly to the Departments, 
to ask what they might tell their people. 

"Tell them," said the Admiral, "that there 
is nothing to say — yet. Here! We are send- 
ing out a bulletin." He passed it over. 

The Sea Strategy an Invader Would Employ 

"The enemy fleet," said the bulletin, "has ex- 
panded its line enormously to threaten many 
far separated points simultaneously, and thus 
mask its actual design for landing. Our ships 
and air scouts, and the army air scouts, are try- 
ing to penetrate the screen of cruisers, de- 
stroyers and enemy air-craft to find the real 
fleet with the convoys.' ' 

"But is this not a chance for the navy to at- 
tack the scattered enemy ships ?" asked one. 

"Opportunities may occur," answered the 
Admiral. "But the business of our fleet is to 
keep itself in battle formation. ' ' * 

The sea-coast cities read the bulletin and held 
their breath. Through their streets thundered 

i A tactical necessity for an outnumbered fleet. 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 27 

their traffic, as in peace. But the exchanges 
were closed — had closed half an hour after 
opening, in panic. Even in that short time, a 
thousand fortunes had been destroyed : and men 
passing outside had heard from within a vast 
noise of cries and shrieks as of animals. 

The banks were closing. The streets leading 
to the railroad stations from the financial cen- 
ters were clogged by slowly moving but madly 
crowding automobiles and cabs and trucks. 
Everything on wheels had been pressed into 
service. On one open truck, guarded by half a 
dozen men who showed automatic pistols os- 
tentatiously, were bags of gold. The United 
States sub-Treasuries were being emptied. 
Men tore at securities in their safe-deposit 
vaults and stuffed them into valises, and ran. 
The treasure of the cities was being sent inland. 

In front of the newspaper offices stood the 
citizens. They stood so closely crowded that 
there was no passage through those parts of 
the towns. Their throngs were so great that 
from their outskirts only those could read the 
announcements who were armed with field 
glasses. These fortunate ones told the news 
as it appeared: and it was repeated to the 



28 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

crowds in the side-streets, who packed the roads 
from house-edge to edge. 

All these great crowds were utterly silent. 
There was no sound from them, except for the 
voices of those who passed the news on. A 
man looking from a high window in a news- 
paper office suddenly stepped back, with a chok- 
ing in his throat. "It is — it is," he said, and 
choked again, "as if they were waiting for the 
end of the world. ' ' 

A Strategical Shelling of the Coast 

Incessantly the bulletins spoke. Light- 
houses, coast-guards, patrols, harbor defenses, 
ships, air-scouts wirelessed their reports to 
Washington, and Washington flung it swiftly 
through the land. 

Nantucket had seen ships. There were ships 
moving toward the Long Island coast as if to 
threaten New York. Atlantic City on the 
southern New Jersey coast, and Kockport in 
New England sent out warning. 

It was a still, warm morning, heavy with the 
soft, humid air that early spring lays on the 
cities of the sea. There was no breeze, except 
for a languorous breathing from the distant 






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THE COAST BOMBARDED 29 

ocean, that stole up the harbors and scarcely 
moved the air. Suddenly that brooding, heavy 
air was shaken. One! Two! Three! 

Afterward, when men compared the time, they 
knew that it was heard at the same instant at 
New York and Boston, and all the stretches of 
coast between them and beyond. Even in that 
moment of fear, there were thousands who in- 
stinctively looked at their watches and timed it. 
It was exactly half -past ten when the first shot 
sounded. Very regularly, almost somnolently, 
came the far-off shocks through the air. There 
were half -minute intervals between them, quite 
exact. 

The last boom was heard at eleven. Long be- 
fore that the bulletins had begun to tell that 
ships were shelling the coast. Duxbury Beach 
near Boston was being shelled. Long Branch 
and Asbury Park were bombarded. Amagan- 
sett on Long Island was in flames. 

"It has stopped," said the bulletins, them 
"The snips have ceased firing." 

Then there came news from the harbor de- 
fenses. Two ships, said Plum Island at the 
east end of Long Island Sound, had engaged the 
defenses at long range without effect. A ship 



30 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

had come in east of Coney Island, just outside 
of the zone of fire from Sandy Hook, reported 
Fort Hamilton, and dropped shells into Brook- 
lyn's suburbs. 

Now the crowds were silent no longer. Long 
years afterward, old men told how on that still 
April morning they were in quiet places on the 
outskirts of the great cities, and heard from 
there a great, strange sound as of a vast aeolian 
harp. It was the noise of multitudes, risen. 

They stormed their City Halls, roaring for 
soldiers. They tried to rush their armories, 
demanding weapons. To Washington flashed 
the dreaded news of Mobs. "Troops must be 
sent at once," said the cities. 

The old Chief of Staff, with "the bit in his 
teeth," dropped the dispatches on the floor. 
"Let 'em handle their own mobs," said he. 

Not Enough Men to Guard Even the Water 
Supply of New York and Boston 

"Handle your own mobs!" he said again, to 
The Boss from New York, who appeared with a 
flaming face. 

But The Boss had the bit in his teeth, too. 
Those dispatches, and long distance telephone 



THE COAST BOMBABDED 31 

messages from close lieutenants, had filled him 
with a dread that was bigger than the new-born 
dread of the old soldier. "I've broken bigger 
men than yon ! " he roared. ' ' A thousand times 
bigger! Once and for the last time, are you 
going to send the army to protect us ? " 

"Once, and for the last time," said the Gen- 
eral, quietly, " no ! " 

The Boss looked at him. His eyes glared. 
Then, all at once, he saw that in the General's 
face that gave him a big, new, overwhelming 
knowledge. He saw that the new word "NO" 
had been born in Washington ; and that he and 
his henceforth would have to admit that it 
meant "NO." 

It hit him like a club. Something came from 
his throat that was not a sob, yet strangely like 
one. ' l Then what — then — are we going to ever- 
lasting smash!" 

"Listen," said the General, gravely calm as 
in the beginning. He laid his hand on the poli- 
tician's shoulder. "We have swept together 
the stuff that you and your kind gave us in 
these past years. Up there," he pointed north, 
"in Connecticut, our officers have been fighting 
to make an army of it — of battalions that have 



32 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

no regiments, of divisions that are not divisions, 
of riflemen who never learned to shoot and of 
cavalry that never learned to maneuver. But 
even if all that mess were not a mess — if all 
these young men were fit to fight in the battle 
line this moment, there are not enough of them 
to guard even the water-supply of New York 
and Boston." 2 

"Then you won't put any men into the city?" 

"To defend a city from within is an act of 
desperation, no matter how big one's army is," 
said the General. "The place to defend a city 
is as far away from it as you can meet the 
enemy. ' ' 

"But the newspapers say that you haven't 
men enough to stop him." The Boss had dis- 
missed all attempt to bluster. "Isn't there a 
chance?" 

"Not if he comes in the force we expect — and 
he will be sure to come so." The General did 
not endeavor to soften his statement. He 
spoke sharp and short. "And remember — the 
cities are not the United States. Our business 
is to keep the army in the field for the Union, 
not for New York or Boston or even Washing- 

2 This statement is based on official army calculations. 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 33 

ton. There is a price to be paid — and perhaps 
the cities must pay it. ' ' 

" And you'll pay the price, too," muttered the 
Chief of Staff, looking northward toward New 
England from his window after the politician 
had gone. " You 're paying it now, with sweat 
and nerves; and you'll pay it in lives." 

A Militia That Cannot Shoot 

There, in Connecticut, lay the army, looking 
formidable enough. Radiating in beautiful 
precision from a central point, were miles of 
tents separated by geometrically straight rows 
of company streets. Over all the great space, 
afoot and horseback, in companies and troops, 
in squadrons and battalions, moved spruce, 
agile figures in the trim efficient campaign dress 
of the American soldier. Glossy, bright flags 
floated everywhere. The sweet bugles sang. 

It would have seemed a very harmonious, 
solidly welded whole, that army, to any layman 
who could have had a bird's eye view of its busi- 
ness-like assembly, its great parks of artillery, 
its full corrals of mounts, its endless rows of 
tents and equipage and its enormous trains of 
transport vehicles and ambulances. 



34 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

But at one end of that great, orderly, formid- 
able camp were hordes of organized militia 
firing at targets. With the enemy on the coast, 
these men were still being broken in to shoot — 
not to become sharp-shooters, but to qualify 
merely as second-class marksmen that they 
might at least learn enough about the use of 
their rifles to be not entirely useless in battle. 
Ever since the militia of the coast States had 
come in, small-arms experts of the army had 
been clutching greedily at every bit of daylight, 
to teach 14,000 men how to shoot — 14,000 men of 
an armed force that was offered by the States 
to be the country's first line of defense. 3 

Into that camp had marched a month before, 
with flags flying, bands gallantly playing, 
weapons gleaming, one whole State's militia 
organization of which only 700 men had fired 
regularly in practice during the whole preced- 
ing year. Only 525 of even that small number 
had qualified as shots, and more than a thou- 
sand were carried as utterly unqualified. Of 
that entire State force, only one man had 
passed through the regular army qualification 

3 From tabulated returns by the militia departments of 
twelve Eastern States. 



THE COAST BOMBAEDED 35 

course with the rifle, and only twelve had quali- 
fied at long range practice. 4 

"Brave?" said the hapless General of Bri- 
gade who had them under his hands. "Brave? 
If we gave 'em the order, they would charge an 
army with their bare hands, sir — and they might 
as well." 

He fluttered a sheet of paper in his hard, 
hairy fist. The sheet showed 25,353 organized 
militia enrolled as "trained men armed with the 
rifle." Of these 15,927 men had qualified suf- 
ficiently to be fit for firing in battle. There 
were a thousand men in that command whose 
records showed that they had not fired their 
rifles a single time in a year: and the General 
had reason to believe that many of these never 
had used weapons except as instruments of 
parade. 5 

State Artillerymen That Have Never Quali- 
fied as Gunners. 

A mile away, in the artillery encampment, a 
field artillery battery of regulars from Fort 
Sill swept their guns at top speed through pas- 

* From annual reports of rifle practice for 1914, militia 
organizations. 

5 See tabulated returns published by War Department, 1915. 



36 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

sages so tight that it seemed impossible for the 
flying wheels to clear them. Sharply they 
wheeled and came to position, just as a militia 
battery arrived. 

The militia guns were hauled by horses that 
their State had hastily hired or bought. The 
brutes had hauled trucks in a city; and in try- 
ing to wheel, one of them straddled the gun. In 
a moment the gun-team was around and over 
the guns in a confusion of chains and leather. 

"Do you stable your mounts on top of your 
guns in the milish?" shouted a regular, glee- 
fully. But he and his fellows helped good-na- 
turedly enough. 

"We never had horses till now," growled 
one of the militiamen, who was stooping to tug 
at a trace-chain. It made his face fiery red. 
"State wouldn't give us any, and we didn't 
have stables, anyway, in our armory. So we 
couldn't break in any mounts." 

"Nor you couldn't break yourselves in, chum, 
I guess," spoke another regular. "How the 
devil did you get gunnery practice 1 Haul your 
little gun out by hand to the firing ground ? ' ' 

The militiamen fumbled at the trace again. 
"Didn't fire it," he said, without looking up. 



THE COAST BOMBAEDED 37 

"All right, milish!" shouted the regular. 
"Shake! You're game, all right, you boys! 
Willing, by gum, to face the Hell that you're 
going to get, and not a gunner in your battery. 
Fine leather-headed citizens you must have, 
back home." 

"They didn't think much of artillery at 
home," grinned the militiaman. "Thought 
that infantry was all they needed. They sort 
of thought we just had a little toy to play 
with." 

"You ain't going to be lonely, milish," 
grunted the regular, sauntering off. "Tie a 
necktie around your horses and then go over 
yonder. You'll find three other batteries from 
three other States that never had no horses, 
never had no mounted drills, and never qualified 
as gunners. ' ' 6 

Cavalry Without Horses and Undrilled 

A grizzled Colonel of Cavalry rode by. Un- 
der his shaggy eye-brows he shot a glance at 
the helpless battery, and swore. He dated 
back to Indian times, and they said of him in the 

e Under-stated. Annual reports for 1915 show many prac- 
tically useless batteries. 



38 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

army that lie knew nothing except cavalry- 
tactics and horses. But he knew them ; and he 
was breaking his old heart over the militia cav- 
alry that had come under his command. 

Some he had that were good enough to win 
his full praise ; but none of these was full as to 
quota of men. The Colonel of the best of the 
regiments was riding at his side. It was an 
organized force of rich men, each of whom had 
brought his own mount, trained as carefully as 
any cavalry horse, and perfectly equipped. 
"Fine, sir, fine!" said the old Indian fighter. 
"But oh! "Wait till you see what arrived last 
week. They can ride ! Yes, sir, they can ride. 
Heaven knows how they learned it, for they 
didn 't ever have a mount except what they hired 
in livery stables. A rich State, too, and one 
that did its infantry damned well, damned well, 
sir. It was supposed to be a regiment of cav- 
alry that we were to get. Do you know what 
arrived? Two squadrons! And, sir, they 
came afoot. They served a State that evidently 
prefers horseless cavalry." 7 

He chewed his cigar and threw it away. 

7 Annual report Militia Organization, 1915, (An Eastern 
seaboard State.) 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 39 

"Look over there !" lie continued. "See those 
chaps? They were among the first to come to 
us. Yes, sir. The entire cavalry force of that 
State came out — the entire force, you under- 
stand. D'you want to know how many there 
were? Three troops, — three — troops — con- 
found me, sir. Not a whole squadron. But as 
these three troops were in three different parts 
of the State they hadn't even been drilled to 
move together in their little three troops as one 
body. We're just getting 'em so that they can 
ride in squadron without smashing into some 
other troop and crumpling the whole outfit to 
Hades." 8 

State Troops Without Medical Supplies, 
Shoes, Overcoats 

Even while the old cavalry leader was swear- 
ing, a delegation of civilians, sent to visit the 
camp officially, was gathered at headquarters. 
The visitors were haggard and worried: but, 
with the ever-ready optimism of the extraor- 
dinary American race, the most worried one of 
them all said: "A splendid army. Looks fit 
to fight for its life. We are sure that you will 

s Tables given in War Department statistics, 1915. 



40 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

give a good account of yourselves, General, 
against any force." 

"Against any force,' ' echoed another. 

The Major-General did not reply. He gazed 
over the spick and span tents, the spick and 
span men, the spick and span guns, far and on, 
and on, over an encampment that stretched out 
of sight behind distant wooded heights. 

In the immediate line of his vision lay the 
sanitary camp. There, beside his own regu- 
lars, lay sanitary troops of the State militia 
that had come into camp without ambulance 
companies, without field hospitals, without 
medical supplies. He thought of one regiment 
(a regiment on paper, seven companies in real- 
ity) that had appeared without even its service 
outfit of shoes and overcoats. Two whole 
State divisions, had they gone into action on 
their own strength, would have had no ambu- 
lances at all to carry off their wounded. One 
division, formed from a State that had done 
better than most with its militia, arrived for 
war with two field hospitals short and lacking 
seven full ambulance companies. Even the 
richest State of the sea-board groups had left 
its organized force short, both a field hospital 



THE COAST BOMBAKDED 41 

and an ambulance company. Not one of all 
the militia forces from all the States had am- 
bulances enough. 9 

The soldier looked up at the sky. "Lord! 
Lord!" he muttered, not impiously. "An ex- 
travagant land. As extravagant with its lives 
as with everything else." 

The One Thing in Which Our Army 
Would Be Perfect 

There was only one thing in which that army 
was preeminent and perfect. It was in the 
matter of transport. Even that had been 
made only since war was declared; but it had 
been made swiftly, thoroughly, because it de- 
manded only an efficient, swift gathering of 
vast resources. 

Within an hour of the declaration, the army 
had swept the coast States from New Jersey to 
Maine clear of everything serviceable that had 
wheels. Piled on miles of sidings beside the 
magnificent railroad system lay the rolling 
stock of a dozen great commercial States. 
Like mammoth trains along the sides of all the 

9 Extracted from tabulated returns to War Department. 
(Report on Militia Organization, 1915.) 



42 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

highways, north, south, east and west from the 
camp, were the requisitioned automobiles and 
trucks. 

This army was going to be able not only to 
fight on its stomach, as Napoleon said, but it 
was going to be able to fight on flying feet, too. 

So great were its resources in motive power, 
that although there were motor vehicles mak- 
ing a double line miles long on each of half a 
dozen roads leading from the camp, there still 
were thousands of swift cars free to patrol the 
American coast from the end of Maine to the 
Virginia Capes. 

The army might not be able to withstand a 
blow; but it could dodge. 

It could know, too, in time to dodge. Its own 
trained intelligence department was supple- 
mented by ten thousand and more untrained 
observers and watchers, who tried to make up 
for their lack of technical skill by keen intelli- 
gence, alertness, adventurous daring and — un- 
limited private means. 

Queer enough were their reports, often in- 
comprehensible, frequently absurd to the point 
of tragedy. In a measure, they made a con- 
fused trouble for army headquarters; yet on 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 43 

the whole they were invaluable in that time, 
when the United States was so wofully short 
of scouts. 

The First American to See the Enemy's 
Troop Ships 

The volunteer scouts spied out the air as they 
did the roads. 

It was a volunteer who soared out in his bi- 
plane from New Bedford in Massachusetts that 
morning, when the newspapers announced the 
approach of the hostile fleet. He had learned 
to loop the loop for fun, fun being the great ob- 
ject of his gay though strenuous existence. 

Fortunate it was, indeed, that rich men had 
taken up aviation as a sport: for the enemy had 
come with aeroplanes counted not by scores, 
but by hundreds. And to oppose them, the 
American army and navy combined had ex- 
actly 23 ! 10 

Now it had happened that the few military 
airmen, attempting their scouting flights from 
the south and the west, had encountered unfor- 
tunate cloudless conditions, which quite pre- 

10 Official figures: 12 Army aeroplanes, 13 Navy aero- 
planes, no dirigibles, two aeroplanes not serviceable, total 
effective, 23. 



44 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

vented them from evading the far superior 
forces of hostile airmen. They had, therefore, 
been beaten back, continually, before they could 
pierce the screen. 

The volunteer, however, sweeping across the 
mouth of Buzzards Bay and out between the 
islands of No Man's Land and Martha's Vine- 
yard, dipped into one of those drifting, isolated 
fogs that are born in the waters of Nantucket 
Shoals. Before a slow, lazy wind, the thick 
vapors went steaming and trailing out to sea, 
and he went with them. Occasionally he rose 
above the bank and looked out, like a man lift- 
ing himself from a trench. He had done this 
about a dozen times, and he was getting into the 
thin, seaward end of the fog-belt, when he saw 
ships. 

Instantly he went up, up, up. It was a rac- 
ing one-man biplane. He thanked Heaven for 
its speed: for even as he was looking down on 
the ships, little things detached themselves 
from the decks and arose. They were specks 
at first, but in a moment they had grown. He 
watched them grow out of a corner of his eye, 
but with all his vision, all his concentrated at- 
tention, he looked at the fleet. 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 45 

There, surrounded by war vessels, he saw a 
long line of immense two-funneled, three tun- 
neled and four-funneled steamships; and he 
knew that he was the first American to see the 
troop transports of the enemy. 

The News the Airman Brought 

He was turning in a sharp circle to flee even 
while he counted them. He was darting to- 
ward the coast, even while he still looked side- 
wise down at them to finish his count. Then, 
rolling and swooping as he put on the fullest 
speed of his racing engine, he fled, with five 
navy planes behind him, coming on the wings 
of their explosive storm. 

He wondered if they were firing at him. All 
that he knew was that his world just then was 
only one blur of whistling, strangling, smiting 
air and deafening roar. He struck a hole in 
the air and pitched sharply. He swept over 
the fog bank. It could not help him now. He 
dared not sink low enough to hide in it. Shin- 
ing brightly in the bright air, he volleyed 
straight on as if he were going to dash into the 
blue wall of sky ahead. 

He won. He never knew how far the enemy 



46 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

planes had pursued, or whether they had come 
near him or not. He knew only that suddenly 
there was a yellow band of sandy land deep, 
deep under him, that the next instant trees and 
hills swept past like little color-prints, and that 
he came to earth. 

Then he reached for a flask. And then he 
looked to wonder where he had landed. And 
then he heard the roar of a motor on one side 
of him, and the roar of a motor on the other. 
i ' Hands up ! ' ' shouted a man in khaki, leaning 
from the side of a swaying, drunkenly rolling 
car. He put up his hands, laughing hysteri- 
cally. 

Fifteen minutes later the telephone bells 
rang in the forts on Fisher's Island, Plum Is- 
land, in the Narragansett Harbor defenses, and 
in the headquarters of the field army. It told 
them that the enemy transports were thirty 
miles south of Nantucket Island, standing in 
for Block Island Sound or Long Island. 

Unleashing the Submarines 

Up from Fisher's Island under the Con- 
necticut shore mounted an army hydro-aero- 
plane. It rose 2,000 feet, and circled there, 



^■■■■■■IMBMHmHMB^ 




©Brown Bros., N. Y, 



Up mounted a hydro-aeroplane." 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 47 

with such graceful, steady wheelings that 
despite its constant speed, it seemed to be soar- 
ing in lazy spirals like a sleepy gull. Under 
the two fliers in the machine lay the eastern 
entrance of Long Island Sound — the Watergate 
to New York, with half-open jaws whose fangs 
were the guns of Fisher's Island on the north 
and Plum Island on the south. Utterly harm- 
less and innocuous seemed those two jaws, for 
not even the keenest eye could make out from 
above anything more savage than grassy 
mounds and daintily graded slopes of earth. 
Not even the sharpest glass could see within 
those pretty models in relief the dragons of 
12-inch mortars that squatted in hidden pits 
sixteen in a group, or the sleek, graceful rifled 
cannon whose secret machinery could swing 
their thirty-five tons upward in an instant and 
as instantly withdraw them after they had spat 
out their half ton of shot. 

Between the guarding jaws there was deep 
water — deep and beautifully green. One of the 
airmen spoke to the other, who was looking out 
to sea through his glasses. " There they 
go," he said, nodding to indicate the water 
below. 



48 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

Both looked. They looked into fifty feet of 
ocean, but their height made it but as a thick 
pane of dim green glass. 

They saw things moving, deep down. They 
were sleek and gray, like small whales. But 
they had snouts longer and sharper than any 
whale that ever swam. Three of them there 
were, moving out to sea through the entrance, 
steadily, at about ten knots an hour. 

The Wait for the Enemy to Strike 

An hour passed. The men in the hydro- 
aeroplane descended, and their reliefs went up. 
They circled for an hour. Sometimes they 
drifted out to sea till the land was lost behind 
them. 

The forts and the army headquarters caught 
a wireless from the air. The enemy fleet was 
approaching Block Island, said the message. 
The hydro-aeroplane was rushing homeward 
while it spattered its news into the air, for it 
was a slow machine, and swifter ones were over 
the fleet. The enemy had formed in columns, 
ejaculated the fleeing machines, with destroy- 
ers and light cruisers in advance, and the trans- 
ports, gripped on all sides by armored ships, 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 49 

were coming on in echelon formation, eight 
cable lengths, or 4,800 feet, apart. 

Simultaneously, almost, all the coast places 
from Barnegat to the end of New York Har- 
bor's farthest flung domain signaled and tele- 
phoned and wired that the menacing ships had 
disappeared. To Washington and the waiting 
American fleet passed the message from sea- 
scouts that all the enemy screen was withdraw- 
ing slowly toward the east — a mighty screen, 
lying along a hundred miles out to sea, and 
steadily closing in on its nucleus, to protect its 
flanks and rear against surprise from the ocean 
ways. 

They were moving fast now — much faster 
than fourteen knots. There was no feint now. 
They were sweeping straight at the land. But 
where would they strike! Would they land at 
Long Island to march their army to New York, 
or would they strike at Rhode Island or the 
southern coast of Massachusetts? 

Boston was sure that they would come at 
Massachusetts. New York roared with the 
news that its own Long Island coast was the 
enemy's object. But though the cities were 
shaken with panic, there were no mobs now. 



50 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Noise and fear and medley of advice and de- 
mand and anger there were, but no mobs. The 
cities had handled their mobs with long cordons 
of silent, stout, unimaginative police and with 
firemen who brought out clanging engines and 
hose. It was the best answer to hysteria; for 
these sudden-born mobs had been born only of 
hysteria. They became all the more orderly, 
after it had had its vent. And the real mob, 
the silent, brooding, dangerous under- world, 
had not begun to stir. 

It would not, now. Before noon there were 
men in all the armories — militia fragments and 
volunteers. They were incapable of fighting 
soldiers ; but the mobs were as helpless against 
them as they, in turn, were helpless against 
trained armies. 

All That Our Submarines Could Accomplish 

On a dreadnaught in the van of the convoy- 
ing fleet, stood the Admiral of the armada. He 
was speaking with the ship's Captain, as they 
paced up and down the bridge. Everywhere 
enormously long polished black cannon thrust 
their supple bodies out of turrets. Like the 
peering heads of serpents, the guns of the sec- 



THE COAST BOMBAKDED 51 

ondary batteries looked out from bow to stern. 
Everywhere stood officers and men at quarters. 
Without a moment's pause signals ran up and 
down, wimpling out their gaudy messages, and 
everlastingly the wireless sounded its stutter- 
ing staccato. Yet there was a placid, strangely 
peaceful quiet over the whole gray, tall, bris- 
tling machine. Except for its appearance, it 
might have been a pleasure yacht. 

"It's a lovely shore," the Admiral was say- 
ing. "Some beautiful estates and charming 
people. I was delightfully entertained within 
five miles of where we shall land. It seems a 
rough return for hospitality. But one does for 
one 's country what one would not do — hello ! ' ' 

The dreadnaught's circling destroyers were 
coming at the ship headlong. The Captain 
leaped to the rail. Before he got there, the 
ship's port battery crashed. A signalman 
pointed at the water fifty yards off. Some- 
thing like a staring, hooded eye had looked from 
the sea for a moment. 

It was the last thing the signalman saw on 
earth. The dreadnaught shuddered. While 
its guns were still firing, it lifted with a jerk 
as a man would lift if caught by an upward 



52 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

swing under the jaw. A great, queerly muffled 
explosion shook it. For perhaps a minute it 
tore along under the impetus of its own speed, 
but it did not move smoothly. It jolted, like a 
cart going over a rough road. Then it began 
to topple. Over and over it leaned, slowly, fast, 
faster. There was not an outcry. Short calls 
of command there were from officers, but not 
a sound from the men. 

It was very still now. The wireless had 
ceased, the engines were shut off, and there was 
only the roar of steam. 

The dreadnaught's crew was clinging, like 
men clinging to a steep cliff, holding fast to 
everything that would give foot-hold or hand- 
grip on the inclined deck. A signal climbed 
along the toppling mast. Then, with a thunder 
of breaking metal, with fire-hose, ammunition 
cases, instruments, ship's furniture all volley- 
ing into the sea, the ship fell full on her side 
and went down. 

A Maneuver to Escape Undersea Attack 

In a hissing, breaking sea that instantly was 
gray with ashes and multi-colored with oil, 
swam eight hundred men. None came near 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 53 

them. The dreadnaught's last signal had been 
the order to keep off: and the big fleet was 
weaving in and out at top speed, in a maneuver 
long since perfected, to escape other attacks 
from the invisible things. 

Far astern raved the guns again. This time 
the alert destroyers had not missed their aim. 
A periscope disappeared. Presently, slowly, 
little spreading disks of oil swam on the sur- 
face, and united, and more floated upward and 
spread. 

Not for a moment had the fleet fallen into 
disorder. Even while the destroyers were 
picking up what survivors they could find, an- 
other dreadnaught hoisted its commander's 
flag as Admiral, in place of the one who lay 
under the bright green water. A speed cone 
went up : and warships and convoy steamed full 
speed ahead. 

Half an hour later the periscopes of two sub- 
marines, outdistanced, bobbed up far behind 
the fleet. Their gray shapes arose, streaming. 
The manholes opened and heads came out, 
blinking into the sunlight and drawing in great 
breaths of fresh air. They followed the ships 
toward the coast. 



54 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

One of them hoisted a wireless apparatus, 
and began to call. It was a weak call, that had 
to be repeated again and again. Then Mon- 
tauk Point heard, over a temporary apparatus, 
and received, and began to send on to New 
York; and the bulletins told that submarine 
M — 9 had sunk the Admiral's flag-ship, that 
submarine G — 3 had sunk a destroyer, and that 
submarine — 1 had been lost. 

" Victory! Victory! VICTORY !" ran the 
news. They knew that it was not victory, those 
great, anxious crowds that stopped all traffic 
that day in all the continent of North America. 
But for a while they were thrilled, and they 
cheered, and forgot the slow, implacable grip 
of irresistible power that was closing in on their 
eastern sea-coast, not to be stayed, not even to 
be halted. 

The Bombardment of the Coast 

The day passed, and the dusk came in. A 
pleasant evening it was, warm enough to tempt 
people to stay out-of-doors. Even in the trem- 
bling sea-cities there was all the wonted life of 
such a season. The rich had fled; but the 
others remained. There was nothing else for 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 55 

them to do. A few months before, had any of 
them been asked what they would do in case of 
an invasion, they would have painted a picture 
of the millions fleeing from their cities with 
what possessions they could lug. Thus it had 
been in Europe, as they had read. Thus it 
would be in America. 

But it was not so. There they were, watch- 
ing and waiting, and clinging to the only hold 
they knew. And in this soft dusk, there they 
loitered in their countless miles of streets, and 
talked, and argued, and prophesied, just as they 
had done always. And everywhere in the miles 
fronted by little houses and tenements and tall 
apartments the children were ushering in the 
spring by playing ring-around-rosy. Every- 
where their thin, clear young voices made the 
old accustomed music of the towns. 

EXTRA! EXTRA! 

In the soft dusk, on the Rhode Island and 
Massachusetts coast there was falling red Hell 
and ruin. 

Out of the tranquil, empty sea it had come. 
Out there, far out, in the pearl and gray, there 
had been flashes. There had been roars and 
whistles and bellows in the high, still air, com- 



56 THE INVASION OF AMEKICA 

ing, coming! And the shells had plunged 
down, everywhere, unending. Streams of iron, 
streams of fire, streams of screaming, bursting 
things: things that struck the land and spun 
into it like beasts biting, and burst, blasting 
away forests and houses and men in crimson 
whirlwind: things that plunged into towns and 
ricocheted, and pulled down walls and towers : 
things that darted at power plants and dark- 
ened the world: and things that burst into 
towns with fierce fire and set the world a-light. 

It was not news that came through the spring 
night. To the men at the receiving ends of 
wires it was as if there were coming to them one 
wild din of terror. Here were telephone mes- 
sages that broke off in the middle and were 
never to be resumed on this earth. Here were 
telegraph dispatches that stopped suddenly and 
left the wire dead, its far end dangling where 
a shell had torn down the poles. From hill 
tops far inland came raving words of burning 
towns glaring red in the country below. From 
somewhere unknown, from somebody unknown, 
came one word over a telephone that instantly 
went out of commission. It was: "God." 

In the cabin of the new flag-ship sat the new 



THE COAST BOMBARDED 57 

Admiral. The ship was shaking with the ex- 
plosions from its secondary batteries, but the 
cabin was orderly and sedate. A shaded light 
was shining on a chart. 

"Another hour of this," said the Admiral, 
"and I think the coast will be nicely cleared for 
the landing.' ' He selected a cigar from its 
box, and lit it carefully. 



Ill 

THE LANDING 

The first American soil on which the invader 
set foot was not on the mainland. It was a 
steep-edged, wind-blown bit of New England 
territory that swims like a ship far ont on the 
Atlantic in the great misty ocean gate between 
painted Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard and 
the brown-banded lighthouse of Montauk Point, 
Long Island. 

Unimportant to the world, bnt famous in 
American history and legend is this Block 
Island or Manisees, as the Indians called it, 
meaning the Isle of God. Here, ever since 
American liberty was born, there have clung 
generations of sea-faring, storm-fighting New 
England men, proud to call themselves Ehode 
Islanders, though the State to which they be- 
long is so far away that they can only just see 
its coast 

Block Island's men and women stood on Me- 
hegan Bluff and Beacon Hill and Clay Head, 

58 



THE LANDING 59 

watching their sky fill with fighting tops and 
enemy flags, and their sea oppressed by enemy 
craft. Among those who stood there that day 
were descendants of men who had fought at sea 
in every American war. Some were there who 
could boast that their ancestors had crept into 
Long Island Sound in little sloops, and even in 
rowing boats, to harry tall King's ships. 1 

Strong-hearted, like their forefathers, were 
these men. They looked out on their beset 
horizon and doubled their sun-burned hands 
into fists, longing to get among the foe with ship 
to ship, gun to gun, and the battle-flag of 
America shining. 

This was no tame population, to be terrified 
like a driven herd. Smacksmen were these, 
accustomed to looking unafraid into the black 
snarl of storm. Swordfishermen were here who 
went daily, without a second thought, to fight 
the lithe spearsman of the sea in his own ele- 
ment. 

The First Invader 

A cruiser rushed at their island. Heavy 
with turreted guns and broadside batteries, 

1 Block Island men helped in the capture of a troopship 
during the War of the Revolution. 



60 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

tall with laced iron mast-towers and wide fun- 
nels and ponderous cranes, swarthy-gray over 
all like a Vulcan's smithy, the enormous thing 
stopped half a mile out with the guns of the 
secondary batteries pointing at the land. 
From under her quarter, around bow and stern, 
swept destroyers with cocked funnels spitting 
smoke and with ready, alert men at the lean 
little guns. 

They moved straight for the little harbor, 
in a long line. On the bridge of the foremost, 
an officer waved a hand at the crowd of fisher- 
men on the shore, pointed to his guns, and, with 
a backward motion, to the cruiser. 

"Aye! We take the hint, damn ye!" 
growled an old man. "He means," he turned 
to the rest, "that we'd better not make a fuss! 
Drop that!" He turned sharply to a younger 
man, who had just joined the group. He 
had a shot-gun, half concealed under his 
coat. 

"Are we going to take it laying down?" de- 
manded the armed man. 

The old man pushed him backward with both 
hands. "You fool! That thing out there 
could blow us off the island, men, women and 



THE LANDING 61 

children, as if we was dead maple-leaves afore 
a southeastern gale!" 

The destroyers had stopped. The crews 
swung their guns toward the shore. 

From the cruiser dropped six ships' boats, 
full of blue- jackets. They swung past the de- 
stroyers, beached, and formed in a line. There 
was a click of breech-bolts shot home — so quick 
that it was as but one sound. 

A Lieutenant advanced his men with the 
swinging navy trot. He pointed to men in the 
little throng, selecting six of the older ones. 
"We take the island," he said in precise Eng- 
lish. "Fall in! We hold you responsible for 
the good order of the rest of your people. 
There must be no attempt at resistance.' ' 

While he spoke, another detachment of the 
landing party had been busy among the huddle 
of boats in the harbor. Some were being made 
up into a tow. Others were being scuttled at 
their moorings. A third detachment was 
knocking holes into the smaller craft hauled up 
on shore. 2 

2 A landing party seizing an outlying island for a base, as 
Block Island would infallibly be seized, always destroys every- 
thing that might enable the inhabitants to communicate with 
the mainland. 



62 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

The First American to Fall 

Three sailors were just driving boat-hooks 
through the bottom of an up-turned cat-boat, 
when a tall young fisherman leaped at them 
with an oaken tiller-handle, and struck one 
down. 

The other two closed on him, but let go again 
almost instantly at the sound of a sharp order. 
They tore themselves away and jumped 
aside. 

There was another order, in the same sharp 
voice. Instantly, while the fisherman still 
stood, staring, with his weapon in the motion 
of striking, a blast of fire spat at him from six 
carbines. His head went up, exposing his 
broad brown throat. He thrust his hands be- 
fore him, all the fingers out-spread. With his 
eyes wide open, he tottered and pitched face 
down. 

Another order, and the sailors wheeled, cov- 
ering the islanders. 

"Dan!" screamed a girl in the crowd. 
"Hush! Don't look!" An older woman 
caught her around the neck and pressed the 
girl's face to her breast. 



THE LANDING 63 

"He brought it on himself !" said the Lieu- 
tenant to the fishermen. "Take warning! 
That is war!" He turned, and walked to the 
beach. 

The dead man lay where he had fallen. The 
bluejackets, lowering their carbines, came to 
rest beyond him, facing the Block Islanders im- 
passively. 

None of these had said a word. Save for the 
outcry of the girl and the woman's "Hush!" 
there had been utter silence, as if the discharge 
of the weapons had swept away speech. 
Slowly clenching and unclenching their hands, 
the big, weather-beaten, strong men stared at 
the corpse that lay huddled so awkwardly be- 
fore them. 

One of the women touched a white-haired, 
white-bearded islander on the arm. "Won't 
they let us have him?" She turned her eyes 
toward the dead man. "It don't seem hardly 
right — to let him lay there. ' ' 

The old man looked at her as if waking from 
a trance. He passed his rough hand over his 
brow. With his slow, wide fisherman's stride, 
he stepped forward. The sailors instantly 
brought their weapons up. 



64 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

The old man pointed dumbly to the corpse. 
In reply, a sailor indicated the Lieutenant with 
a gesture. 

The fisherman walked to the Lieutenant. "I 
wanted to ask you — " he began, but a signal- 
man interrupted him, pointing at his head. The 
Block Islander looked at him, bewildered. Im- 
patiently, the sailor pointed again, and the is- 
lander understood. 

Hesitatingly, reluctantly, he took off his hat. 
Crushing its brim with the grip of helpless an- 
ger, he faced the officer. 

"I wanted to know — sir — if mebbe we 
couldn't — " he indicated the corpse. 

"Yes!" answered the officer, shortly. "You 
can have him ! " With a change in his voice, he 
added: "I am sorry. Very sorry. Yes! 
You may take him away." 

Block Island as a Naval Base For the Enemy 

So fell brave Block Island. It had greeted 
the sunrise with the stars and stripes hauled 
defiantly in the face of the invader. The set- 
ting sun shone on the flag of the enemy. Its 
wireless was being operated by uniformed men. 
Its telephone and telegraph communications 



THE LANDING 65 

with the mainland were torn out. Its little har- 
bors were being used by destroyers and small 
craft as if they had been foreign naval bases 
forever. 

So, too, had fallen the islands of Nantucket 
and Martha's Vineyard with their stout- 
hearted, passionately American population. 
They had yielded, not to ignoble fear, but to the 
irresistible mechanics of war. 

The people of Block Island, watching de- 
stroyers steaming slowly toward the New Eng- 
land coast with strings of their fishing boats in 
tow, noted a curious thing. Every boat was 
laden with fish-nets. The enemy had gathered 
every seine, every pound-net. He had lifted 
long fyke-nets from the sea, and had dragged 
the enormous hauling-seines from their drying- 
reels. 

Block Island wondered what a fighting navy 
meant to do with fish-nets. Nantucket and 
Martha's Vineyard wondered, too; for they, 
also, had been stripped of their gear. 

Following the long tows with their heaped 
brown freight, six cruisers moved toward the 
coast, each guarded by destroyers whose men 
watched the sea for a periscope, or for the whit- 



66 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

ened, broken water that would indicate the 
presence of a submarine. 3 

They moved fast, until they were within three 
miles of land. Then they opened fire. 

Steaming rapidly up and down, ship behind 
ship, they loosed all their broad-side batteries, 
starboard and port in turn, simultaneously. So 
fierce was the blast that the water shook. All 
the surface of the sea between the ships and 
the land quivered. Fantastic vibration-ripples 
shot all around, like cracks on a shattered steel 
plate. 

The blast killed the wind, and made an in- 
fernal little gale of its own around each ship, 
that spun in hot ascending columns. Surface- 
swimming fish were struck dead and floated in 
schools on the water, miles away. Even the 
bottom-haunting creatures felt the shock and 
scurried into the sand and mud. 4 

3 A submarine cannot attack until it has risen near enough 
to the surface to lift its periscope above water. Having thus 
obtained its aim, it submerges again only deep enough to 
conceal the periscope. It fires its torpedo blind when sub- 
merged. If it dives too deep, it might send the weapon harm- 
lessly under the ship's keel. Hence, it is possible, often, to 
"spot" the disturbed, whitened water above a submarine even 
though it is sunken out of sight. 

* Target practice near the land has been found to so affect 



THE LANDING 67 

This was only the blast from the lips of the 
guns. It was only pressure. It was only the 
released energy that drove conical steel masses 
forward. They sped with a violence that would 
leave the swiftest locomotive behind in the 
wink of an eye. Like locomotives smashing 
into an obstacle, the projectiles hit the 
land. 

That impact alone was annihilation. Having 
struck, the projectiles exploded. 

The chart under the shaded light in the Ad- 
miral's cabin had a semi-circle marked on it— 
a semi-circle that made a great segment into the 
land. As if it were in the electric arc, the 
country in that zone of fire melted. Houses 
vanished into stone-dust and plaster-dust even 
as the screaming thing that had done it struck 
houses a mile beyond and threw them on each 
other. Streets became pits with sloping sides 
that burned. Trees rocked, roaring as in a 
gale, and were tossed high, and fell, and twisted 
in flame. The land shriveled. 

all life nearby that it seriously injures the commercial fish- 
eries. The fishermen of Cape Cod have opposed fleet-firing 
several times. On one occasion it is recorded that the fishing 
for lobsters (exclusively bottom-haunting crustacean) 
quite ruined for months owing to the firing of big guns 



was 



68 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

A Vast Confusion of Facts and Rumors 

As the shells fell on New England's coast, so 
the news fell on the United States. It sped as a 
vast confusion of facts and rumors, bewildered 
tales of terror, inventions born of crazed brains, 
dispatches that told only half a story, and mes- 
sages that told none at all and yet, in their very 
incoherence, told more than intelligible words 
could have done. 

The newspapers were tested that night, and 
the steady, intangible discipline of the great 
organization held true. Never a linotype in 
all the cities had to wait for its copy. The word 
went to the presses to "let her go." Extras 
followed extras. 

But the news sped ahead of the extras. It 
sped, and spread, and grew, and became mon- 
strous. 

The enemy had forced the harbor defenses of 
Boston! So ran the rushing rumor in New 
York and Philadelphia. Long before trains 
could carry papers there, people in far-off coun- 
try districts heard it. 

The State House was in ruins! Portsmouth 
and Boston Navy Yards had fallen! 



THE LANDING 69 

New York, ran the stories through Boston 
and all New England, was invested at both ap- 
proaches ! Fort Totten had been blown np ! 
The enemy ships had the range of the city, and 
already the sky-scrapers were toppling into 
Broadway ! 

The government was fleeing from Washing- 
ton! An army had landed on the Delaware 
coast! 

Even those who had the newspapers before 
them, and knew that none of these things was 
true, were shaken when the tales that had sped 
ahead, came back like the back-wash of a wild 
sea. Many hundreds that night ran with the 
newspapers in their hands and helped to spread, 
and make more fantastic, the fantastic false- 
hoods that had been born miles away. 

But the newspaper organization worked 
steadily. Bit by bit the medley took tangible 
form. From the watchful, self-controlled chain 
of light-house and life-saving stations, revenue 
marine and other coast guard services; from 
the steady, unimaginative army and navy ; from 
the alert, unshaken harbor-defenses, bit by bit 
the story of the night began to come in orderly 
sequence. 



70 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

The Sea Vitals of the Commercial United States 

The enemy fleet was biting into the sea-vitals 
of the commercial United States, the southern 
coast of New England between Cape Cod and 
Long Island Sound whose possession is the key 
to the manufacturing and industrial life of the 
East. 

Battle-ships lying off the mouth of Buzzards 
Bay were dropping shells into the harbor and 
into the shores. One ship had ventured close 
into the land, approaching within the zone of 
fire from Fort Rodman, and had dropped shells 
near New Bedford. Hidden by intervening 
hills, it had escaped return fire, and was now 
lying just out of range, dropping an occasional 
15-inch projectile toward the defenses. 5 

Other ships were firing into Narragansett 
Bay. They, too, were firing at immensely long 
range, to avoid return fire from the defenses. 

5 As a matter of fact, the extreme range of the present 
armament of American harbor defenses is 23,000 yards. This 
is not a reliably effective fighting range, and is merely stated 
as being the extreme range, "under crucial test," of the 12-inch 
steel rifled mortars. The rifled guns as now mounted have a 
range of not more than 13,000 yards. Battle-ships now being 
constructed are armed with 15 and 16-inch guns that can out- 
range the extreme theoretical range of the mortars. 



THE LANDING 71 

Montauk Point's wireless transmitted a dis- 
patch that three vessels were standing in there 
and lowering boats. Then the apparatus fell 
silent. 

Point Judith's wireless had ceased speaking 
soon after dusk. Its last dispatch was that 
shells were falling near it. An hour later its 
operators reported from Narrangansett Pier 
that the tower had been destroyed. 

Watch Hill and Westerly, on Rhode Island's 
southwestern border, said a message from 
near-by Stonington, were burning, and were be- 
ing wrecked by heavy shells. Fort Wright tele- 
graphed that this was fire from two battle-ships 
standing just outside of range from the fort's 
mortars and rifles, and throwing shells from 15- 
inch guns. 6 

But these great guns were being used only at 
intervals. Though their bite could rend towns, 
they destroyed themselves as they wreaked de- 

e Harbor defenses are not constructed, necessarily, to pro- 
tect places near them. Their purpose is to prevent a naval 
force from occupying an important harbor whose possession 
would open the way to rich territory or lay commerce pros- 
trate. Therefore it is no defect in the construction of the 
Long Island entrance defenses that it is possible to bombard 
coast places near them. It is physically impossible ever to 
defend all the places on our coast with fortifications. 



72 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

s traction. The acid- fumes from their monster 
powder-charges ate out their scientifically rifled 
cores. They had to be spared. 

The real attack came from the heavy cruisers, 
standing close in and working 4, 5, and 8-inch 
guns. For every shot that the battle-ships ' 
mammoths fired, the cruisers fired a hundred. 
It was not a bombardment. It was a driving 
flail of whirling, smashing, exploding metal that 
whipped the coast between Watch Hill and 
Point Judith. 

To the ear it was din, vast, insane. In real- 
ity, it was an operation of war, conducted as 
precisely and methodically as if it were a quiet 
laboratory experiment. The wireless controlled 
every shot from every gun on every ship. 
From the small things on slim tripods to the 
wide-mouthed heavy calibers spitting from 
hooded turrets, not one spoke without orders. 

Stveeping the Floor Clean for the Enemy Armj 

To the trained artillerists, listening in the 
Narragansett and Long Island Sound defenses, 
it was plain as English words. That crash, as 
if a steel side had been blown out of a ship, was 
the four-inch broadside, all loosed at once. 



THE LANDING 73 

Now it would be fifteen seconds, and another 
crash, farther east, would tell of the next ship 's 
4-inch discharge. And the heavier, fuller, air- 
shaking roar that came in between was from 5- 
inch guns, while the broken, slower, coughing 
bellow, that overwhelmed all the rest and echoed 
from every echo-making prominence inland, was 
the voice of an 8-inch rifle, speaking once every 
iive minutes. 

Now the flocks of shells went high to reach 
far to their farthest range into the land. Now 
they went low to sweep through the cover near 
shore. Sometimes the steel things drove, as if 
in sudden uncontrollable fury, at one given spot. 
Again, they spread out into a dreadful cone that 
danced along a five-mile stretch like a dancing 
whirl-wind. 

The fire slackened, and died away, and fell 
silent, and burst out again as if a horde of 
devils had only held their breaths to scream 
anew. Up and down it moved, now in, now out, 
although long ago the shells had whirled away 
everything that could be destroyed. There was 
nothing living in there now. The very beasts 
of the woods, the birds in their nests, were 
dead. 



74 THE INVASION OF AMEKICA 

To the survivors who had escaped from the 
first red blast, the thing seemed only a deed of 
insane wickedness. What had they done, they 
asked each other with sobbing breaths, to bring 
a steel navy at them? What could a great, 
powerful enemy gain by this murder of peace- 
ful, unarmed country folk 1 What danger could 
there lie to him, they gasped as they fled through 
the dark, or lay face down to the earth and 
gripped at grass, in tiny houses and gardens 
and little sea-shore hamlets! 

It was wicked murder. " Wicked murder !" 
said the wires, telling their tale to their fellow- 
citizens far away. 

The men who were working the ships' guns 
were from little villages, from pretty sea-shore 
hamlets like these themselves. They were not 
thinking of the habitations which were being 
blasted away. It was an operation of war. 
This was the chosen time, and this the chosen 
place, for the landing of the army that waited in 
the gloom of the sea for them to make the shore 
safe for it. 

With their brooms of steel and fire, they 
simply were sweeping clear the floor on which 
that army was to set its foot. 



THE LANDING 75 

Far in shore of the flame-torn cruisers, safe 
from any land-fire under the parabolas of the 
naval projectiles as if they were under a bomb- 
proof arch, certain little vessels had toiled up 
and down from the beginning. Slowly, for they 
dragged between them long wire cables that 
hung down to the sea-bottom, they moved back 
and forth along the beach, fishing. 

The fish they were trying to catch were spher- 
ical and conical steel fish that bore little pro- 
tuberances on their tops like the sprouting horns 
of a yearling kid. 

A touch as soft as the touch of a lover's hand 
could drive those little horns inward, to awaken 
a slumbering little devil of fulminate of mer- 
cury, whose sleep is so light that a mere tap will 
break it. And the fulminate 's explosion would 
detonate three hundred pounds of gun-cotton. 

The submarine mine says to the big ships: 
"I am Death!" And they cannot answer it. 

Guns That Were Being Made Too Late 

But there is an answer to the mine. It is the 
mine-sweeper that drags for them. The men 
on these mine-sweepers dedicate themselves to 
the tomb. Some must inevitably perish. They 



76 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

will find a mine with their keels instead of their 
groping drags; or they will grapple one too 
close ; or their wire cable will clutch two mines 
and swing them together, so that the little horns 
touch — 

But, if the mine-sweepers are permitted to 
work on, the mines may kill, and kill, and kill, 
yet in the end they will be gathered in. 

There is an absolute answer to the mine- 
sweepers. It is to hammer them with rapid 
fire from the shore. These little vessels, drag- 
ging laboriously, present targets that scarcely 
move. No artillerist can miss them. 

But again there is an answer to the mine-pro- 
tecting guns. It is long-range fire from the 
ships that lie safely outside of the mine-fields. 

There is only one answer to that. It is for 
defenders on land to plant huge guns far inland 
that can reach the ships and beat them back that 
they dare not come close enough to reach the 
lesser shore artillery nearer the sea. 

This formula of shore-defense is a formula so 
simple that a mathematician, given the condi- 
tions, can work it out with simple arithmetic 
though he never had seen a cannon in his life. 

Guns, guns, and again guns — and an army to 



THE LANDING 77 

protect them! This was the only possible re- 
ply to the fleet that was pounding the coast. 
The United States had not enough sufficiently 
powerful mobile coast guns and siege guns. It 
had not enough artillerists to fight what guns 
there were. And it had not enough ammuni- 
tion to provide them with food. 7 

In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania ; up the Hudson, 
in smoky Watervliet; in Hartford and Bridge- 
port and New Haven, and a dozen other towns, 
with machinery hastily assembled, and work- 
men hastily learning, they were trying, now, to 
make projectiles enough, and guns enough. 
They were trying to make enough powder, down 
in Delaware and New Jersey. 

In the encampment of the United States 
army at that moment trains were delivering 
guns — guns made in record time, magnificent 
testimony to American efficiency under stress. 

7 The Army War College has repeatedly called attention to 
the urgent need of the mobile army for siege artillery and for 
the organization of an efficient body of troops trained in its 
use to be available whenever needed. "Ammunition on hand 
for artillery, 38 per cent, of amount required." (See report 
of Army Board, and Secretary of War Garrison's statement 
to House Appropriations Committee, 1915.) Another esti- 
mate in the possession of the author would indicate that the 
ammunition on hand for heavy artillery is only about 15 per 
cent, of the amount required. 



78 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

But the guns were coming in one by one — to 
meet an enemy who was beating at the gates 
and could not be stopped except with hundreds. 

The Enemy on the Mainland! 

Even then the flag-ship off the coast was sput- 
tering a code into the night. It was a long 
code, but its meaning was short. It meant: 
"Now!" 

The mine-sweepers hauled their gear and 
came out. Fourteen had gone in. Those that 
came out were nine. 

Before they had well begun to move, the 
beach was white with ships' boats, and nine 
hundred bluejackets and marines set foot on 
the mainland of the United States. 8 

With sharpened knives in their sheaths, and 
loaded carbines, and bandoleers filled with 
cartridges, and entrenching tools and pro- 
visions, each man of that first force presented 
the highest attainable unit-efficiency for war. 

The boats were scarcely off the beach, to re- 
turn to the ships, before eight hundred of these 

s Troops cannot be landed with as little delay as this. But 
naval tactics assume as a matter of course that an advance 
body of bluejackets, trained for beach and surf work, can 
effect an immediate landing if protected from attack. 



THE LANDING 79 

units were trotting through the up-land, throw- 
ing out advance parties, and making hasty 
trenches from which, in a moment, there looked 
the greyhound muzzles of machine-guns. 

On the shore, the strand-party was sinking 
sand-anchors and rigging derricks. Others were 
setting together the five and one-half foot sec- 
tions of jointed hollow masts for the wireless. 
When the boats beached again, with more men, 
two 40-foot masts reached into the night, and 
hand-power generators were making the 
antennas pulse with their mysterious life. 

Launches came in now, dragging wide, flat- 
bottom pontoons and swinging them on to 
shore and speeding back for more. Men 
snatched at them, and held them in the surf, and 
ran their mooring up the beach, while others 
carried out kedges and boat-anchors from all 
sides to make them lie steady in the ground- 
swell. 

The beach shone white as day, all at once. 
The destroyers had steamed in, and were giv- 
ing their men aid with their search-lights. 

In swung more pontoons. Broadside to 
broadside, kedged and anchored out, they were 
moored out into the sea, at half a dozen parts 



80 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

of the beach. Laid far enough apart that they 
should not touch, however hard the swell might 
strive to grind them together, they formed float- 
ing piers, reaching beyond the farthest outer 
line of surf. From pontoon to pontoon ran 
gang-planks, lashed fast. 

Three hours had passed. Three times the 
ships' boats had made the trip between war- 
ships and shore — thirty naval service cutters, 
each carrying thirty men. Twenty-seven hun- 
dred sailors, marines and soldiers were holding 
the Rhode Island coast. 9 

From the trenches of the advance party a 
wireless spoke to the cruiser bearing the senior 
officer. " Motor scouts reported in front, on 
road, three thousand yards in. Will fire rocket 
indicating direction. ' ' 

The rocket burst. For a minute it made all 
that part of the black country stand out as un- 
der lightning. " Crash !" said the ship. Over 
the bluejackets swept the shells, and burst. 

"Crash!" said another ship. 

"Apparently effective," said the wireless 

9 Lord Cochran landed 18,000 men on the open coast of 
Chile in five hours, with some guns. The surf conditions 
there are extremely hazardous. 



THE LANDING 81 

again. " Shall send patrols forward." And 
again it spoke, in half an hour : ' ' Enemy driven 
back. Our patrols hold road. Barb wire en- 
tanglements completed. Scouts in. Report 
land clear, except for enemy cavalry in force 
inland out of range." 

The Transports 

"Now!" said the cruiser's wireless, speaking 
once more into the sea. 

Silent, formless, black, four vast ships, long 
and twice as tall as the cruisers, came slowly in 
among them. 

These were the transports, sealed that not a 
thread of light should shine from them to be- 
tray them to the thing that all the fleet dreaded 
more than anything else — the under-water lance 
of a submarine's torpedo. 

Under water the submarine is always blind, 
even when the brightest light of the noon-day 
sun shines vertically into the ocean. It can see 
only with its periscope eye above the surface. 

At night the periscope cannot see. Then the 
submarine ceases to be useful as a submarine. 
It can act still ; but only on the surface, like any 
other torpedo boat. 



82 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

Two score destroyers, each of thirty knots, 
each armed with from four to ten 3-inch guns 
and rapid-firers, circled around the transports. 
Twice as swift as the surface-speed of the 
swiftest submarine, armed overwhelmingly, 
they could defy surface attack. 10 

They hemmed the darkened troop-ships round 
with a great circle of search-lights, all thrown 
outward, that served the double purpose of 
illuminating the ocean for miles, and of blind- 
ing any who tried to approach. No human eye 
looking into that glare could have seen the 
transports, even if the night had not shrouded 
them. 

Still, these liners with their tens of thousands 
of men, were too precious to be protected only 
by this bright vigilance. From each transport 
there projected long steel booms, eleven to a 
side. These held out a half-ton net of steel 
grommets. Stretched fore and aft as taut as 
steam-capstans could haul it, this shirt of chain- 

10 American submarines now in commission do not carry 
more than one 3-inch rapid fire gun. It is set in a water- 
tight compartment from which it is elevated when the vessel 
is on the surface. Armaments of destroyers are: Ammen 
class, five 3-inch rapid fire 30 cal. rifles; Aylwin class, four 
4-inch rapid fire 50 cal. rifles; Bainbridge class, two 3-inch 
rifles and five 6-pounders rapid fire. 



THE LANDING 83 

mail hung far down into the sea to catch any 
torpedo that might come driving at the keel. 

There was more protection than that. It 
would be day soon, and then the submarines 
would be blind no longer. All around the area 
chosen for the transports to lie in, the fishing 
boats taken from the sea-islands were being 
towed by destroyers, to drop their nets. Their 
wooden buoys formed odd geometrical outlines 
on the sea. 

These thin things of meshed twine, made only 
to hold little, inoffensive fish, were suspended 
like submarine fences, north and south and east 
and west of the field of operations. 

That such trivial things should be of any avail 
against under-water craft with death in their 
heads, might well have seemed absurd to a 
landsman. They did not seem absurd to the 
Lieutenant who commanded United States sub- 
marine M-9, when he steered his craft, awash, 
out from behind Fisher's Island Sound at dawn, 
and looked eastward through his glasses. 11 

n Submarine wire entanglements are being used effectively 
for the protection of harbors during the present war. The 
wire cannot resist cutting much more than twine can. It 
stops the submarine by menacing it with being entangled and 
trapped. A submarine caught under water cannot be cleared 



84 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

Ten miles away lay the transports, quite mo- 
tionless, beautifully assembled as a target for 
him. At that distance their masts and funnels 
seemed huddled. He had a vivid picture in his 
mind, for an instant. It was a picture of fat, 
slow sheep crowding together with a wolf among 
them. 

Woven Twine Versus Submarine M-9 

But between them and his wolf lay the net 
buoys, dotting all the surface, in and out as if 
they had been laid by some laboring artist to 
make a maze. 

The sea-wolf went slowly nearer. With its 
tanks full of water, it lay so far submerged that 
the sea washed the coaming around the man- 
hole hatch. The Lieutenant was like a man 
wading breast-high in the ocean. It would be 
hard to see him from any distance. 

He studied the traceries of buoys. There 
were spaces between them, that betokened gaps 
in the fences. One might find a gap and go 
through. 

But to find a gap, the submarine must raise 

by its crew. The utmost the men can do is to try to reach 
the surface by putting on "special escape helmets" and emerg- 
ing through the air-locks. 



THE LANDING 85 

her periscope above water, and look around. 
But at each gap, sweeping incessantly to and 
fro, like galloping cavalry, were destroyers. 12 
Could one dive and go through blind? The 
Lieutenant knew the limitations of his terrible 
little animal. Its kiss could draw a twenty 
thousand ton ship into the abyss, but the woven 
twine would laugh at it. 

Its nose could cut through them like the 
threads that they were. But the torn ends 
would catch conning tower and masts and peri- 
scope tubes. Even if it tore away from them, 
the whirl of the propellor remained to renew 
the danger, sucking the trailing cords to itself 
and in one instant switching them around and 
around the spinning shaft. 

With the propellor blocked, the submarine 
must rise ; for only with its propellor thrusting 
and its horizontal fins set to hold it down, can 
the submarine stay under. It submerges, not 
by sinking but by diving with main strength. 

12 With periscopes shot away, a submarine, even though un- 
injured, is quite helpless. She may escape, if she is in deep 
water and the assailant is far enough away to give her time 
to dive and flee, deeply submerged. See loss of U-12 on March 
10 merely through destruction of periscope, which permitted 
enemy destroyers to ram her. 



86 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Another rather vivid picture flashed into the 
Lieutenant's mind. It was not a picture, this 
time, of a wolf among sheep. It was a picture 
of a sudden enormous commotion among those 
quiet net-buoys, as of something struggling 
down below ; and then of a violent surge as the 
tangled nets were dragged to and fro by a help- 
less submarine, held fast by the tail. 13 

A breeze arose with the rising sun, and the 
water roughened. The submarine stopped. 
It could not meet rough water while it was 
awash. Although its buoyancy when it was 
sealed was such that its propellor had to 
thrust full speed to make it dive, yet with its 
hatches open two hundred gallons of water, far 
less than is contained in a single big wave, would 
send it down like a tin can. 14 

The Commander held on as long as he could, 
watching the whitening water in the east, and 
watching the transports. 

is Even steam vessels of high power often are rendered 
helpless by jamming a trailing hawser around the shaft. 
The revolution of the shaft so macerates and binds the fouled 
material that the engines are unable to turn the propellor in 
either direction and only a diver can clear it. 

I* The reserve buoyancy of a submarine when awash (tech- 
nically known as "diving- trim" ) is so delicate that 100 addi- 
tional gallons of water would sink a 300-ton vessel. 



THE LANDING 87 

He saw that at a thousand yards' distance 
aronnd them (just what he would have chosen 
as neat torpedo range), there lay a little fleet 
of gun-boats, all thrusting out booms with steel 
nets, that made them look oddly as if they were 
hooped and wide-skirted. Disposed in an oval, 
they guarded the transports with a second wall 
of steel wire. 

And overhead, soaring in spirals, never flying 
far away, and always returning, were three 
naval planes. The Commander of the M-9 knew 
that they were waiting and watching for just 
one thing — the " shadow' ' of a submerged sub- 
marine. 15 

This enemy, plainly, was taking no chances. 
The fleet had power and time. It bent them to 
one object — to land its men safely. It would 
not engage the harbor defenses, and so open it- 
self to the risks of plunging fire and torpedo 
attack. It would not blockade harbors, and so 
make itself a chosen mark for such terrors as 
M-9. 

15 "From an altitude of 2,000 feet the movements of a sub- 
marine torpedo boat may be easily observed unless the water is 
very muddy" — Capt. V. E. Clark, Aviation Corps, U. S. A., 
December issue, Coast Artillery Journal. 



88 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

The Three Harbor Gates to New York and 

Boston 

Very scientifically, very thoughtfully, had the 
enemy staked out the vital spot at which he had 
decided to strike. Here, facing each to each 
almost like the salients of a fortification, lay 
three harbor gates to the northeastern United 
States — Buzzards Bay, gashing deeply into 
Massachusetts: Narragansett Bay, almost cut- 
ting Rhode Island in two : and the eastern en- 
trance to Long Island Sound and the cities of 
Connecticut. 16 

Open any one of these gates, and it opened 
the way at one blow to both New York and 
Boston. 

These three sea-salients were greatly armed 
for defense. In each harbor lay batteries of 
12-inch all-steel rifled cannon. Hidden under 
facings of earth, steel and concrete, they sat on 
disappearing carriages and pneumatic gun- 
lifts that would swing them up as if they 
weighed ounces instead of tons, and instantly 

is Important cities in this territory besides New York and 
Boston are Fall River, Providence, New Bedford, New London, 
Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, Worcester, Springfield, 
Willimantic and Pawtucket. 



THE LANDING 89 

plunge them back again into cover after firing. 

Deep under earth embankments, squatting in 
concrete-lined graves, 12-inch mortars, sixteen 
to a group, stared upward at the patches of sky 
over their heads, which was all that their men 
would see while they were firing, however bit- 
ter the fight might be. 

A single shot from one of the long, graceful 
rifles might sink a ship, if it were well placed. 
A single salvo from the mortars, the sixteen 
firing together, assuredly would. And they 
could do it. Aimed by mathematics, they were 
sure to strike the spot. 17 

A score of serving devices in the defenses 
were slaves to the steel champions. Search- 
lights in armor waited like men-at-arms to point 
with a long white finger at their prey. Mine 
fields and emplacements and cable conduits 

17 Colonel Abbott, U. S. A., one of the leading Chiefs of 
Engineers who constructed the U. S. harbor defenses, stated 
that the fire of the sixteen mortars, "like one giant musket 
throwing a charge of buckshot, each pellet weighing y± ton," 
could drop their sixteen projectiles into a space 800 feet 
long by 300 feet wide. The author was present at a test of 
a 16-mortar battery on Sandy Hook when the sixteen shells 
were fired simultaneously at a deck-plan of the United States 
cruiser San Francisco, the plan being outlined with stakes on 
the New Jersey beach five and a half miles from the battery. 
Each projectile struck inside of the staked outline. 



90 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

were there to force the ships to steer where the 
guns could strike them most surely. Masked 
by trees and mounds, concealed by every device 
against betrayal, were range-finders and fire- 
control stations. 

Here sat experts who had studied the most 
occult questions of arithmetic, geometry, sur- 
veying, navigation, and cartography for one 
purpose — to direct those long guns true. They 
were provided with exquisite instruments for 
calculating angles and distances to an inch, 
though the point to be ascertained were ten 
nautical miles and more away. 

Before them lay charts of the sea-area that 
they were guarding. Let a ship come within 
the limit of their apparatus, and in the time re- 
quired to speak into a telephone the gun-pits 
miles away down the defense-line would crack 
with the explosion of tons of smokeless powder. 

They were nearly perfect, those works — as 
engineering works. They were fully armed 
with the engines to make them malignant to the 
ultimate fatal degree. The ten-mile area of 
sea that lay so bright and dimpled that morning 
might well have been black as the Wings of 
Death; for a few little motions of the waiting 



THE LANDING 91 

men under the pretty grassy mounds would un- 
fold those pinions. 

The Joint in America's Armor 
But under the iron visages was weakness. In 
none of the defenses on this morning when the 
time had come for their test, were there more 
than one-half the number of men required to 
hold them. 18 

They could fight the guns, so long as the 
action remained a ship-to-fort action ; but if the 
enemy attacked at the rear, from the land, they 
were not in sufficient force to meet him and 
throw him back. Attacked from the land, the 
men of the defenses would have to retire to the 
inner keep and fight from shelter with rapid- 
fire guns. And when the defenses thus began 
to defend themselves, their hour would have 
struck. 19 

Still, for the time they were deadly. The 

is "it will thus be seen that there are now provided about 
one-fourth of the officers and one-half of the enlisted men 
necessary for this purpose," i.e. manning the defenses of the 
American coast — Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., 
to Chief of Staff, September 19, 1914. 

19 "It is certain that present-day coast defenses could not 
withstand an energetic attack from the land side," i.e. they 
must be defended with a mobile army — "Over-Seas Opera- 
tions." 



92 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

enemy fleet paid them the supreme tribute of 
scrupulous respect. Not a vessel ventured 
after dawn into the deadly circle of their reach. 
To make sure that no vessel should expose it- 
self by accident, the mine-layers of the enemy 
fleet were even then moving well outside of the 
zone of extreme fire, and laying immense steel 
buoys, painted a vivid scarlet. 

These scarlet buoys outlined an area of 
safety that was shaped somewhat like a penta- 
gon with its apex at Block Island and its base 
on the Ehode Island coast between Watch Hill 
and Point Judith. 

It was a base marking out five miles of beach 
that was safe both from the fire of the Long 
Island Sound defenses and from the shots of 
the Narragansett defenses. 

Here day-light revealed a land occupied in 
orderly, quiet, perfect military manner. In- 
land, as far as the naval guns could protect 
them, lay the men of the advance landing party 
behind their machine-gun positions. For miles 
beyond that, east and west, their patrols had 
cut telegraph and telephone wires, and occupied 
points that commanded roads by which attack- 
ing forces might approach. 





rf -.«© 




©Brown Bros., N. Y. 

''For miles beyond that the enemy's patrols had occupied 

points . . . ." 



THE LANDING 93 

On the beach, where the blocks and tackle and 
hoisting derricks had been rigged in the night, 
gun-floats were being brought to the beach with 
cannon and caissons. Under the pull of centri- 
fugal blocks these were hoisted out and dropped 
in shore on railway tracks that led over the sand 
to firm ground. 

There motor trucks and traction engines, all 
brought to land during the night, took them 
and hurried them to positions ready for fight, 
or to park them ready for moving when the ad- 
vance should begin. 

Destroying the Railroad of Southern New 

England 

From vantage points inland, from hills on 
Fisher's Island, from such venturesome spies 
as M-9, went the news to Washington, and so 
through the land. The crowds in the cities, 
dense even at that early hour of the morning, 
read on the bulletin boards : 

" Enemy effected a landing during the night 
on Ehode Island between Narragansett Bay and 
Long Island Sound. Transports are now close 
in preparing to put troops ashore. Scouts re- 
port four liners aggregating one hundred thou- 



94 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

sand tons. Army officials estimate that at the 
usual allowance of two men per ton this means 
fifty thousand men. More transports waiting 
under Block Island." 

' ' Now is the time to strike 'em ! " It was not 
one man in one crowd who said it. In every 
city where there were crowds there arose these 
speakers — the excitable, passionate orators who 
are born of every great crisis and who, in such 
moments, find willing listeners. 

"Now is the time to strike 'em, before they 
can bring more men ashore ! They should have 
been attacked in the night ! What kind of Gen- 
erals have we got, to let 'em land, instead of 
throwing 'em back into the sea as fast as they 
came? Where is our army? Keeping itself 
safe?" 

The army, with ten thousand civilian workers 
impressed as they were needed, was destroying 
the railroad of southern New England. It was 
tearing up the shore line of the New York, New 
Haven and Hartford Eailroad from New Haven 
to New London and from New London to Provi- 
dence. It was throwing the rails on flat cars 
to be whirled away westward and northward. 
Concrete and stone embankments, steel bridges, 



THE LANDING 95 

and tunnels were sent skyward through the 
night with dynamite. 

All the connecting system from New Haven 
north to Hartford and from New London north 
to Worcester was being destroyed. Locomo- 
tives and rolling stock that could not be re- 
moved were being sent down grades to crash 
into wreckage, or blown up or set afire. A 
curious intoxication of destruction was on the 
population that night. Prosperous, dignified 
citizens came out with axes or with oil and fire, 
and helped in the ruin. 

In fire and dirt and amid shattering roars of 
explosion and rumbling of falling trestles they 
worked on hundreds of miles of iron highway, 
desperately, frantically, shouting aloud, willing 
to tear their soft hands and to risk limb and 
even life, rather than to wait inactive, and listen 
for news, and dread what was to happen. 

They were tearing up their civilization; and 
they did it with a savage delight, that nothing 
might be left to the foe. 

The American Army's Lack of "Eyes" 

In the Army Headquarters, where a single 
short order had set loose all this saturnalia of 



96 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

destruction, the Commanding General and his 
staff were busied with something that was of 
more immediate importance to them. Desper- 
ately they were thrusting out for information, 
and always they were baffled by superior num- 
bers, superior resources. 

They had pushed cavalry toward the coast, 
and it had been driven back by artillery and 
long-range fire from the ships, whose aim was 
controlled by aeroplane signals from the sky 
and wireless from the shore. They had pushed 
out motor scouts, and the artillery had found 
them. Always, at every approach, during the 
night or since daylight, the ships' fire had swept 
the roads. 

Now, scarcely an hour after sunrise, the 
army aeroplanes had come back, after only hap- 
hazard scouting. They had not been able to fly 
over the invaded coast. Wherever they tried 
it, they reported, they were met by enemy planes 
in superior numbers. 

One United States air-man had been driven 
by four enemy planes into Narragansett Bay 
where he had been picked up by boats from the 
Newport Torpedo Station. Two others, borne 
down by three enemy machines faster than they, 



THE LANDING 97 

and fired at by anti-air-craft guns from an in- 
lying ship, had barely managed to escape 
behind the defenses of Fort Wright in the 
Sound. 

The others had been pressed back, inexorably, 
by the screen of naval planes that swarmed over 
the coast. 20 

The enemy planes came from the sea. To 
the marveling eyes in the American defenses, 
it seemed as if the ocean were spewing them 
forth. One after another rose from the At- 
lantic under Block Island. 

Three strange vessels lay there. They had 
funnels set extremely far aft, like certain types 
of clumsy tramp-ships, but they were big as pas- 
senger liners and their lines showed all the 
efficiency of the naval architect. The great 
sweep of their decks forward was as bare as the 
deck of a racing schooner yacht. 

A structure on short trestles like a skid-way 
rose from this deck at the bow, projecting 
slightly. 

20 The present war has made evident to military observers 
that in the future the "aeroplane screen" will play a vital 
part similar to the "cavalry screen." It is based on the 
simple principle of overpowering the adversary's attempts by 
vastly superior numbers. 



98 THE INVASION OF AMEKICA 

It was there that the aeroplanes were being 
spewed. These were mother-ships. 

Torpedo-netted, guarded by destroyers, 
guarded even by a small semi-rigid dirigible 
that hovered a thousand feet high over-head, 
they were sending out spies to search the land. 

Twenty-Five Aeroplanes Against a Swarm 

The two United States fliers, standing by 
their machines in Fort Wright, looked at the 
ascending swarm. "No wonder !" said one. 
' c You know how many one of those Nations had 
at last accounts? Twelve hundred !" 21 

"And we've got thirteen in the Army and 

21 Estimates that were transmitted confidentially to this 
country by observers in Europe and are now before the writer 
are that the European Nations had raised their aeroplane 
efficiency to the following magnitude: France 1,400, Germany 
1,000, Russia 800, Italy 600, England 400 (probably greatly 
increased since then), Austria 400, Spain 100, Belgium (in the 
beginning) 100, Switzerland 20 and Servia 60 aeroplanes. 
The United States has at present 12 army aeroplanes, 13 
naval planes, no dirigibles, 2 aeroplanes old model, total effec- 
tive 23. The first aero squadron of the army has just been 
formed at the Signal Corps Aviation School, San Diego, Cal. 
It will contain twenty officers and ninety-six enlisted men. 
The last House of Congress refused to consent to the Senate's 
appropriation of $400,000 for military aviation, and the 
amount available this year was cut down to $300,000. The 
Navy Department is making specifications for a small dirigi- 
ble, and on February 27 opened bids for the construction of 



THE LANDING 99 

twelve in the Navy ! ' ' His companion laughed. 
" And Servia had sixty, before the Great War !" 

They said no more, but watched in silence. 
That ascending, continually growing line of fly- 
ing things was like something that was writing 
into the sky the word: " Resources !" 

Suddenlv the American air-men noticed that 
these new machines were not flying to the coast 
near them. They were turning off, in regular 
order. One turned west, to fly over Long Is- 
land. The next one turned east, toward Buz- 
zards Bay. They alternated thus till the entire 
division had separated, and disappeared. 

One of the scouts slapped his thigh. "I be- 
lieve/ ' said he, "that they are going to show 
themselves to Boston and New York!" 

That was at nine o 'clock in the morning. At 
noon the crowds in the two cities were startled 
by a distant roar that grew, almost before they 
had first heard it, into a thundering that shook 
the air. They stared upward and beheld the 
first squadron of armed flying machines that 
America ever had seen. 

six hydro-aeroplanes, bi-plane sea-going type, armored, to 
carry two men, wireless, guns and ammunition at speeds of 
from fifty to eighty miles an hour. 



IV 
THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 

Aemored, with the bright colors of the enemy 
on their under-bodies, the aeroplanes from the 
enemy fleet flew low. What few anti-aircraft 
guns the United States possessed were with the 
army. Around the peaceful American cities 
were no encircling fortifications, no batteries, 
no military works that might conceal marksmen. 
The air-men knew that there was nothing to 
fear. 

They skimmed close to the State House on 
Boston's Beacon Hill. They flew over the tall 
municipal building of New York and dipped to- 
ward the City Hall. They appeared over 
Providence and Fall River, over Brockton, over 
Bridgeport and New Haven. They passed over 
every one of the factory-cities of New Jersey 
that crowd to be near New York's harbor. 

Where they appeared it was as if they bore 

some instant charm to turn the world to stone. 

100 






•* 




THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 101 

All the city noises stopped, dead. All motion 
stopped. Wheels stopped turning and feet 
stopped moving and every white face was 
turned upward. For that long moment of dumb 
fear, men saw nothing except the wide-winged 
bodies. They heard nothing except the yelp- 
ing and droning of the hundred-horse-power 
motors over them. 

Then they fled. Motor-men and drivers bent 
low, and yelled, and sent their vehicles ahead 
blindly. The crowds rushed every door-way. 
They fought for the protection of narrow cor- 
nices as if they were bomb-proofs. They 
squeezed themselves close to the sides of build- 
ings, and clung to smooth iron and granite, and 
stared upward, waiting for bombs. 

Instead of bombs, they saw things raining 
down gently, lightly — little weighted pen- 
nants that circled downward in lovely spirals 
and dropped on the streets with scarcely a 
sound. 

Into every crowded street, into every open 
square of half a hundred cities that day, the 
hostile air-men dropped these pennants. 

They were printed. They bore proclama- 
tions addressed to the people of America. 



102 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

THE ENEMY'S PROCLAMATION 

"Our armies have landed," said the proclamation. "We 
shall advance on your cities at once. Any attempt to de- 
fend them will mean their destruction. Civilians are 
warned against making any demonstration, whether with 
arms or otherwise. Infractions of this Rule of War will 
be punished by summary execution. Houses from which 
hostile acts are committed will be destroyed. Towns whose 
civilian population resists will be destroyed. Take warn- 
ing !" 

Eecovering from their shock of fear, the first 
impulse of the Americans who read these 
proclamations was one of rage. Their cities 
had grown proud in unchallenged greatness. 
These pennants, slowly raining from their sky, 
were infuriating insults. 

Had the invader appeared in that moment, 
the people would have torn up the paving blocks 
to fight him. 

In the State House in Boston there were said 
the words that uttered the emotion of all the 
cities along the Atlantic coast. In that old, 
rebellious town, where American liberty had 
been nurtured in the very presence of an armed 
foe, there were gathered many eminent citi- 
zens, with the officials, the Mayor and the Gov- 
ernor of their State. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 103 

One of these officials had a pennant in his 
hands. ' ' What can we do 1 ' ' he asked. ' ' If we 
had all the militia of the State here, we wonld 
have less than 6,000 men. If the foe arrives, 
and lays his guns on the town — gentlemen, they 
will be guns that fire high explosives and in- 
cendiary shells. "We have nothing to fight with. 
If the army cannot check him before he arrives, 
we must — to save our people's lives, we must 
surrender peaceably ! ' ' 1 

He turned to a man who bore a family name 
identified with Boston's history from the time 
of its settlement. His ancestors had stood in 
Faneuil Hall with James Otis when he dedicated 
it to the cause of liberty. 

"Let Us Destroy It!" 

He took the proclamation, held it for a mo- 
ment while he looked around the circle, and then 
crumpled it suddenly, angrily, in his fist. 
Throwing it to the floor, he set his foot on it. 

"I say," he cried with flashing eyes, "let 
him destroy it ! Better still, let us destroy it ! 
When the enemy approaches, let us send our 

i Strength of Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 1914, as per 
returns of inspecting officers, 5,369 men, 424 officers. 



104 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Boston town np in flame and fragments! Let 
us leave him not so much as a rivet to pick up 
for loot!" 

There were many men there, of many minds. 
They had many interests to guard, and many 
responsibilities to bear. But for a moment 
he carried them with him. They waved 
their hands and shouted assent. 

It was only for a moment. "If all thought 
like you!" said one, an old, grave man. "But 
we have 700,000 people, and they are not sol- 
diers or philosophers. They're human men. 
It is laid on us to protect them, at whatever 
price to our National pride. If humiliation is 
the price that we must pay for our past care- 
lessness, why, gentlemen, we must pay it, bitter 
though it is." 

So it was in New York, in Philadelphia, in a 
score of cities between and around them. 
Everywhere was the first outburst of fury and 
unrecking heroism, and then the sober second 
thought born not of cowardice but of cold logic. 
This north-eastern Atlantic seaboard with its 
chain of twelve million city dwellers, was no 
Holland to drown itself under its own sea in 
order to destroy its foe. These cities were no 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 105 

Moscows, to devour themselves in fire that the 
enemy might perish with them. This was the 
United States of America, and this was the 
Twentieth Century — and the men, no less brave, 
no less patriotic, faced the conditions of their 
place and time. 

They faced it from Portland, Maine, to the 
Capes of Virginia. If the army could not stop 
the invader, they must fall. 

They formed committees of safety. They 
wrestled with their top-heavy municipal ma- 
chineries to make them answer the sharp need. 
Under the stress, all the defects of their political 
rule stood out uncompromisingly, not to be de- 
nied. Their over-staffed departments were 
lost in the ingenious mazes of their own con- 
triving. There was only one answer to the in- 
extricable, blind confusion. It was martial 
law. 

Volunteers Who Could Not Even Be Shod 

But here, too, there was inefficiency — ineffi- 
ciency that had been cultivated and tended, 
like a plant, by politics through the heedless 
years. In the armories there were no reserve 
supplies of weapons or ammunition for the vol- 



106 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

unteers who came to offer their services. Al- 
though the United States government had given 
the States enough money annually for many 
years back to equip them to full war- strength ; 
and although the militia nowhere had main- 
tained even one-half of that strength, there 
were no reserves of blankets, of uniforms, of 
tents, of cots. Doctors who offered their serv- 
ices found that there was no place for them, 
because there were no ambulances, no field hos- 
pitals, no surgical instruments, no anaesthetics 
and no medicines. There had not been enough 
for the troops that took the field, though every 
company had less men than even its insufficient 
peace strength demanded. 2 

The volunteers could not even be shod. 
Those who were accepted had to drill in their 

2 Only eleven States had on hand at the time of the last 
annual inspection one complete uniform (less shoes) for each 
enlisted man of the authorized minimum strength. ... In 
the opinion of the Division of Militia Affairs the States 
could have by this time, by proper economy and care in the 
use of property and the expenditure of funds, acquired stores 
sufficient to equip the militia at war strength. . . . The 
militia is not now equipped with supplies sufficient for peace 
strength. ... In no State is the prescribed minimum peace 
strength maintained." — Pages 206, 283 and 287, Organization 
and Federal Property, Annual Reports, War Department, 
June 13, 1913 to October 1, 1914. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 107 

worthless street shoes, that never could sur- 
vive the test of rough roads and mud and water. 

Politics I Politics! It stared the appalled 
citizens in the face wherever they turned, as it 
had stared them in the face for a generation — 
but now they had to look and see ! It was poli- 
tics that had left their State militias to blunder 
along, each by itself, without agreement or set- 
tled plan. It was politics that now had- sent 
their plucky, intelligent, capable young men 
into the field insufficiently equipped, trained or 
organized. It was politics that now left their 
cities bare, to be made a sport of. 

At the recruiting depots of the regular army 
it was politics again that over-bore the recruit- 
ing officers with eager, courageous applicants 
whom they could not use. What they needed 
now was men who were ready NOW — not men 
who needed six months ' training. These appli- 
cants, offering themselves by thousands, were 
city-born and city-bred. They were men who 
never in all their lives had slept except under a 
roof; who never had lain in rain and storm; 
who had been saved by their city from doing a 
dozen simple things that men of the open do for 
themselves without a second thought. 



108 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

Not one in a thousand of these volunteers ever 
had built a fire of sticks, or pitched a tent or 
even washed dishes. Not one of five thousand 
ever had held a gun in his hands. There were 
thousands there, and thousands again, who did 
not even know what it was to be in the dark — 
for they had slept all their lives in the electric- 
ally lighted city. 

Needed — Not Men But Reserves! 

It was not men that the regular army needed. 
It was reserves ! And never a Congress of all 
the Congresses that had talked and voted and 
appropriated had voted a practical system of 
army reserves ! 3 

Of all the men who had been trained by pre- 
vious army experience, the War Department 
could not call on one unless he chose to volun- 
teer. If those men — invaluable to the country 
at this moment — offered themselves, they of- 
fered themselves one by one, here and there and 
everywhere, scattered through a land of three 
and a quarter million square miles. Enlisted 
thus, they were futile individuals lost in hordes 

3 "We are still without an adequate reserve system either 
of officers or men." — Leonard Wood, Major General, Chief of 
Staff, U. S. A., official report, January 20, 1914. 




©Brown Bros., N. Y. 




©Brown Bros., N. Y. 



'The efficient, prepared, resourceful invader was landing 
his army, not only without losing a man, but 
without getting a man's feet wet." 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 109 

of raw recruits. Could they have been called 
together by their government, they would have 
formed perfect regiments, ready for instant, ef- 
ficient, priceless service. 

While the United States, civilian and mili- 
tary, was working hopelessly to make up in des- 
perate hours for long years of waste, the effi- 
cient, prepared, resourceful invader was landing 
his army, not only without losing a man, but 
without getting a man's feet wet. So perfect 
were the dispositions of this expedition that the 
commander had been able to order, "Our troops 
must land perfectly dry," and the order was 
carried out. 4 

Every transport had three broad gangways 
to a side. Never for a moment were these 
gangways bare of equipped men, moving file 
after file into the enormous flat-bottomed land- 
ing barges. Never for a moment was the sea 
without long tows of them, each bearing two 
hundred men to shore with their rifles between 
their knees, ready. 5 

4 So stated in instructions issued to foreign armies for the 
event of disembarkation. 

s Landing barges of this capacity are possessed by at least 
three Powers and have been tested in maneuvers. 



110 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Preparedness Versus Unpreparedness 
In the camp of the United States Army at 
that moment men were breaking green horses 
for cavalry and artillery purposes. On the 
coast, the enemy's four-decked horse transports 
were sending trained mounts into broad floats 
with derricks and slings, lowering away with 
head and tail lines to prevent struggling, with 
nose lines to bridles to prevent them from turn- 
ing in the air, with men standing by below to 
put little bags of salt into each horse 's mouth to 
quiet it as soon as it touched the floats. 6 

Nothing had been forgotten, nothing left to 
be improvised. The horse-floats had hinged 
sterns. Backed into the beach, these hinged 
boards dropped down and formed gang-planks. 
Sailors threw collision mats on them to prevent 
slipping. It required less than a minute to 
lower a horse from the ships to the floats. In 
less than half a minute each horse was unloaded 
from them and set ashore. To empty each float 
of its cargo of twenty horses, and to have each 
craft off the beach and under tow again for an- 

6 All these details, and many more, are systematically 
worked out in European army instructions, both confidential 
and public. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 111 

other load, was a matter of less than forty 
minutes. 

Almost as swiftly, at another end of the 
beach, guns were being landed from the same 
type of floats, shoal and wide-beamed, that could 
be run well up on shore and could withstand the 
pounding of the surf. They brought four light 
field pieces with their limbers to a load, or two 
heavy field artillery pieces. They were land- 
ing field howitzers of calibers that the United 
States Army did not possess. This artillery 
has been coming ashore for hours. It had be- 
gun to come before dawn. Still there was more 
arriving. 

Yet the beach never was occupied for a mo- 
ment. The guns were rushed inland, the men 
were rushed inland, the horses were rushed in- 
land. Twelve hours after the first landing 
party had prepared the way, Ehode Island was 
occupied by 30,000 foot, 3,000 cavalry and 50 
batteries of artillery — almost two full divisions 
that lay in a great belligerent front snarling 
with guns — a perfect, complex, often-assembled, 
often-tested machine. 7 

7 Under average conditions it is possible to land 25,000 
infantry, 1,000 cavalry and 60 guns in six hours. ... In the 



112 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

This was the time for the American army to 
strike, before the enemy could increase his 
forces and move forward to attack. 

But the American army was a complex ma- 
chine that never had been assembled before, or 
tested before. The Regular Army never had 
been together with the Organized Militia, and 
the Organized Militias of the various States 
never had seen each other. "An uncoordinated 
army of allies," its Commander had called it, 
"with all the inherent weakness of allies, em- 
phasized by the unusual number of allies. ' ' 8 

The Uncoordinated and Unorganized Ameri- 
can Army 

It was an army of which neither the regu- 
lars nor the militia had been organized into 
divisions at the time when it should have been 
done, the only time when it could have been 
done — in the long days of peace. Until it was 

Crimean War 45,000 men, 83 guns and 100 horses were dis- 
embarked and set on shore in less than eleven hours, without 
modern appliances. — "Over-Seas Operations." See also Brit- 
ish and French records. 

8 This quotation is a literal quotation from the War De- 
partment report on "The Organization of the Land Forces of 
the United States," August 10, 1912. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 113 

so organized, it was an army only in numbers. 
For operation against a prepared, organized 
enemy it was not an army but merely a multi- 
tude of units, whose trained and perfect ones 
would inevitably be sacrificed to the errors and 
weaknesses of the imperfect ones. 9 

The division is the true Weapon of War. It 
alone contains in vitally correct proportion the 
various troops that must sustain each other 
when cannons and explosives begin that arbi- 
tration from which there is no appeal on earth. 
It is the division, and the division alone, that 
possesses all the limbs and organs — the signal 
corps and cavalry that are the eyes and ears: 
the infantry and engineers and sanitary corps 
that are the body and feet: and the artillery 
that is the smiting fists. 10 

9 This point has been emphasized in practically every War 
Department report on organization for many years back. 
Congress never has acted on the matter. The Chief of Militia 
Affairs, U. S. A., was forced to report in his last report that: 
"Little or no progress appears to be making toward correct 
Divisional organization." — Part III, 1914, Report on Organiza- 
tion. Only two States have approachably organized their 
militia in correct proportions. 

10 The Division is the fundamental army unit. . . . The 
mobile elements of the Regular Army should have a Divisional 
organization in time of peace. — Office of the Chief of Staff, 
U. S. A., January 20, 1914. 



114 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

In the City Hall Park in New York, a speaker, 
lifted above the crowd that watched the news- 
paper bulletins, was cursing the army amid 
savage cheers. He cursed its Generals and its 
men because they did not fight. He cursed the 
Government. 

The crowd listened, and forgot that again and 
again they had been warned that this would be 
if war should ever come. 

With the blind wrath of helpless men they 
could reason only that at this moment when 
everything should be done, nothing was being 
done. They shouted approval when the frantic 
orator screamed: "Tell Washington to order 
'em to fight. Fight! Fight! That's what 
they're for!" 

The crowds could perceive only that they had 
an army that did not strike a blow. They could 
not know that the American commanders were 
fighting a better fight just then by fighting to 
organize, than if they fought with guns. They 
could not know that to these officers, grown 
gray in the service of their country, this fight 
was more heart-breaking than it would have 
been to fight in the hot blast of shells. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 115 

Regiments of Infantry Without a Single Can- 
non to Protect Them 

To organize an army in the face of the foe 
is like organizing a fire department when the 
streets of a city are already in flames. This 
is what the Chiefs of the Army were trying to 
do— had been doing, day and night, desper- 
ately, ever since the troops had come together. 
And in Washington, in the archives of Con- 
gress, there were lying sheaves of reports, 
gathering dust, that had demanded nothing ex- 
cept the chance to do it in time. 

Here were regiments of militia so " organ- 
ized' ' by their States that if they were permit- 
ted to go into battle as they were, 170 com- 
panies of infantry would face the enemy with- 
out a single cannon to protect them. Of all 
the eastern militia cavalry in that camp, only 
one regiment had a machine gun company. 11 

Even the regular army was efficient only in 

11 Tables 17 and 18, pages 228, 229, Annual Report Division 
of Militia Affairs, U. S. A., October 1, 1914. . . . "The States 
which send their Infantry into active service without having 
made every possible effort to supply it with an adequate Field 
Artillery support, will see in the needless sacrifice of that 
Infantry the cost of their short-sightedness in time of prepara- 
tion." — A. L. Mills, Brigadier General, General Staff, U. S. A. 



116 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

those things that could be maintained and per- 
fected by the steady, personal efforts of offi- 
cers and men. In everything that depended on 
legislation it was lacking. Instead of 150 men 
to a company of infantry some had only 65. 
Its troops of cavalry were not full. It had no 
siege artillery corps. It was a skeleton army 
which, according to optimists, was to be clothed 
with substance when war arrived. Now war 
had come; and to clothe that skeleton with un- 
trained men would have meant that for every 
65 skilled soldiers there would be 85 utterly 
useless ones in each company. 

Shortage of men was not the only curse that 
was laid on the army by the policy of neglect. 
In the enemy headquarters, two or at the most 
three orders were sent to department chiefs for 
every movement. In the American headquar- 
ters, the staff had to deal with units. Every 
problem had to be handled in detail by men 
who should have been free to direct one great, 
comprehensive movement. Every order issued 
by the Commanding General demanded intoler- 
able duplication. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 117 

American Commanders Who Had Never 
Commanded 

The General had under him commanders of 
brigade who had commanded posts that con- 
tained only fragments of regiments. Their 
brigades, never assembled in any one place, 
not only did not approximate to war condi- 
tions, but had to be disrupted and divided and 
re-formed before the General could dare to offer 
them in battle. Hardly a brigade commander 
had under him troops that he had known and 
trained and handled himself. 12 

With exception of those who had been on the 
Mexican border, when a part of the small army 
had been mobilized in a body for the first time, 
these men had tried to prepare themselves with 
the best that Congress would give them — bat- 
talions and companies and single batteries in- 
stead of assembled armies, because the politi- 
cians would not let the army come together. 

The 49 army posts of the United States, long 
a subject of derision among all except those 
who fattened on them, might well have been 

12 Page 26, Organization of the Land forces of the United 
States, U. S. Army report. 



118 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

symbolized now in that camp by forty-nine 
skeletons — a skeleton army waiting to lead the 
other skeleton army to death. 13 

To none was this better known than to the 
enemy. The invaders' commander, standing 
idly with his hands in his pockets, was able to 
say confidently: " They '11 not bother us seri- 
ously. The only thing they'll do, the only thing 
they can do, is to retreat when we begin to 
threaten them." 

He held in his grip the sea, the land and the 
air. In shore lay ships ready to sweep part 
of his front with protective fire. On land his 
advance forces had seized roads and railroads, 
his engineers were repairing what had been 
destroyed, and his cavalry was guarding all 
approaches. His air-men, overwhelmingly 
numerous, spied on the American army almost 
with impunity, and parried with sure aerial 
thrusts all American attempts to spy on their 
own lines. 

The aerial guard, steel-breasted, with the 

13 "While the men who wish to spend the Army and Navy 
appropriation upon unnecessary army posts or unfit navy 
yards have such a voice as well as a vote," i.e. in the Houses 
of Congress, "a great deal of waste and extravagance is sure 
to result." — Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 119 

wings of speed and talons of fire, could be 
broken only by equal numbers, equally terrible. 
Individual daring, individual skill, were noth- 
ing against this armored brood. Five times 
American fliers rose to try it; and five times 
they were grappled in mid-air and torn with 
shot, and dropped to the earth far below. "No 
more ! ' 9 said the General in command. 

He sat with his chin in his hand, studying the 
dispatches that were laid before him. They 
were piled high, though twenty operators and 
half a dozen aides struggled to eliminate from 
the torrential confusion the news that might be 
deemed most reliable. 14 

The "Fog of War" 

There were messages from Washington, mes- 
sages from coast defenses, messages from pa- 
trols and outposts, from scouts and from com- 
pany commanders. There were wild reports 
of enemy invasion from places so far inland 
that it was palpable that they could not be true. 

I* Only the most perfectly organized intelligence department 
can extract from the incredible mass of reports that come in 
during army movements, the few true and important facts on 
which the final orders of the commander may be based. An 
inadequate scouting service is worse than merely weak. It 
betrays its own forces to disaster. 



120 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

There were reports from places so nearby that 
they might mean imminent danger. 

Excited officials of towns and cities sent long, 
involved dispatches or hung for long minutes 
to telephones to recount interminable tales. 

One hundred thousand men had landed, ac- 
cording to spies who had made their way into 
Fort Greble in the Narragansett defenses. It 
was two hundred thousand, telephoned Provi- 
dence, transmitting messages from the coast. 
The army's own scouts and spies and patrols, 
groping in insufficient numbers and finding a 
wall of cavalry and foot and machine gun de- 
tachments opposed to them everywhere, sent in 
estimates that varied all the way from twenty- 
five thousand to eighty thousand. 

These American advance detachments were 
striking the enemy outposts east and west. 
Near Watch Hill three American motor cycle 
companies with machine guns ambushed and 
cut up two troops of cavalry. American cav- 
alry drove back a battalion of engineers who 
had begun work on the railroad at Kingston. 
At Niantic two American motor patrols ran 
into the fire of a concealed field gun and were 
destroyed. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 121 

From Fort Michie on Gull Island came the 
news, brought by a Montauk Point fisherman 
who had managed to make his way across the 
Sound in a small boat, that men had landed on 
that end of Long Island. They had destroyed 
all communication immediately and had seized 
the railroad leading to New York; but it was 
impossible to guess how great this force was. 15 

Only one certain fact was developed from all 
the news. It was that the transports were un- 
loading troops still. 

The Enemy Moves 

Suddenly, almost simultaneously, the Ameri- 
can patrols were driven back all along the line. 
On a front that extended quickly, irresistibly, 
clear across Washington County, Ehode Island, 
from east to west, the invader army expanded. 
It seized Watch Hill. Kingston was occupied 
in force. Wickford Junction was occupied. 

is The Long Island Sound defenses are built to prevent the 
entrance of a hostile fleet into Long Island Sound. By thus 
closing Long Island Sound they protect all the Sound cities 
and the City of New York; but they cannot and do not pro- 
tect all the possible landing places. Long Island, the land 
highway to New York City, is entirely undefended. The War 
Department desires to erect proper defenses on or near 
Montauk Point, but has still to get the authority. 



122 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Narragansett Pier was flooded, all at once, with 
men and guns. 

With the swiftness of a blow from a fighter's 
fist, the invader had struck and won the entire 
railroad system of the New York, New Haven, 
and Hartford Railroad in Rhode Island, and 
commanded the way to Providence. 

The foe had filled his divisions. Forty thou- 
sand men were ready for battle on American 
soil, with ten thousand in reserve on the coast. 

Now the wind turned south-east. Point 
Judith, Rhode Island's cape that coast-wise 
mariners call The Fog-Hole, began to brew one 
of its April fogs, gray and blind and wet. 

Its first effect was kind to the Americans. 
The enemy air-craft, seeing the vapory bank 
growing from the sea, fled toward their lines. 
From all directions they came in, like gulls 
fleeing before a storm. They could not dare 
to remain in strange territory. All their fine 
maps, all their ingenious instruments, would be 
impotent against it. They came in, and 
alighted behind their army. 

Freed from them, and masked by the fog, the 
American scouts went forward again and 
groped once more along the foe 's front. In an 



MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE LANDING 
OP THE ENEMY FOECES 




^ 



RIVER 



NEW. BEDFORD®! 



ntf 



NARRAGANSETT 
PIER 



* MPOINT JUDITH 



*£3 



Entrance to 
LONG ISLAND SOUND 



^ 



\ 



\0 







c& 



d 



/AfBLOCK ISLAND X 



V 



A. Enemy Transports at Beach. The lines and arrows show direc- 
tion of his advance. 
B. United States Army, withdrawn to a watching position. 



123 



124 THE INVASION OF AMEBIOA 

hour field telephones and telegraphs and aerial 
told the American commander enough to assure 
him that the enemy's force in men was at least 
nearly equal to his own. He knew, too, that the 
invader had brought up preponderating artil- 
lery. Every road, every piece of negotiable 
country was held by guns. 

The American army held tight. In its front, 
between it and the foe, there was not a rail- 
line, not a bridge. All had been destroyed. 
Behind it lay a perfect railroad system, with 
long trains and giant locomotives under steam, 
and all the gathered motor vehicles, ready to 
speed along perfect roads. 

So far the fog was kind to the defenders. 
But the invader, too, was quick to seize its 
favor. 

The Fishermen Who Caught More Than 
Lobsters 

Long before, half a dozen men, dressed like 
fishermen, had made their way out of Narra- 
gansett Harbor in a small sloop, and had re- 
ported at the enemy headquarters. For a 
month or more past they had been fishing for 
lobsters; but they had caught more than lob- 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 125 

sters. Their catch lay on the table in the Com- 
mander 's tent, in the form of charts with sound- 
ings and range lines and distances. They were 
maps of the mine fields. 

As soon as the fog began, these men went 
aboard a mine-sweeper. It steamed eastward, 
followed by the others. The sweepers had 
more than the cables and grapples that make a 
mine-sweeper's outfit. Set in rows on the 
after-deck of each vessel were bulging mines, 
filled with 300 pounds of trinitrotol. 16 

The fog became so thick that it was hard to 
say if it were daylight still, or night. Night 
could only make it more black. It could not in- 
crease the obscurity. 

In the coast defenses of Long Island Sound 
and Narragansett Bay every man was straining 
eyes and ears and nerves. Every gun company 
was at its weapon. Every gun was loaded. 
Tall projectiles stood ready with the chains and 
grapples of the hoists prepared. Men stood 
waiting in the powder magazines under the bat- 
teries. 

is Trinitrotol, now being used in Europe largely for under- 
water work, is one of the most violently acting explosives 
known to-day. 



126 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Nothing to see or hear at Fort Wright on 
Fisher's Island. Nothing at Fort Michie on 
Gnll Island. Nothing at Fort Terry on Plum 
Island. On all the shrouded, swift tide-ways 
that led into Long Island Sound there was noth- 
ing. 

There was nothing in front of the Narragan- 
sett defenses that eyes could see or ears could 
hear. Nothing — and then, far out, it was as if 
a sea-monster had arisen in dying torment, and 
lashed, and spouted and screamed. Before the 
riven column of water could fall, there came 
muffled, thundering explosion under water — 
one, two, three ! 

The defenses split the fog with fire. Their 
mine-protecting batteries had been trained over 
the fields long since. There was no need for 
aim. Instantly they swept the hidden sea with 
shells that would clear twenty acres of water. 

Again there was silence and blindness — the 
unearthly silence of the Atlantic sea-fog. It 
lay for half an hour, as if there were no such 
thing as war in the world. 

Then once more came the roar and the crash, 
followed by its submarine echoes. Once more 
the land-guns raved, firing blind. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 127 

Fighting Mines with Mines 

The enemy was counter-mining. Instead of 
sweeping, his vessels were dropping mines of 
their own in the fields, and then, backing off 
to avoid the fire from the batteries if they 
could, they exploded them by electric contact, 
to blow up the American mines with the shock. 

Not all the mine-sweepers escaped mines or 
guns. But there were vessels to spare, and 
lives to spare. All night the counter-mining 
went on, and all night the American guns fired 
into the vapor and the darkness. 

The sun arose invisibly. But it climbed, and 
when it had lifted all its disk above the rim of 
sea, it showed through the mist as a pale illumi- 
nation. It was "burning off" the fog. 

"It will be clear enough in an hour," said 
the executive officer of a battleship under Block 
Island. The vessel's wireless began to speak. 

On one of the mother-ships men brought out 
and assembled an armored biplane. Its two 
fliers stowed range-finding apparatus, aerial 
telegraph, aneroids and charts in it. There 
were signal flags and light, brightly silvered 
balls. Men brought receptacles that contained 



128 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

bombs and adjusted them carefully in place. 
The fliers waited, watching the fog. 

It lessened. It tore away in rifts. All 
around, the ships became visible. 

Seven battle-ships swung around and put on 
speed and rushed in echelon toward the coast. 
They steered straight for the mouth of Narra- 
gansett Bay, turned just outside of the zone of 
fire of its defenses, slowed down and steamed 
across the mouth. 

The bi-plane's engine burst into life. The 
machine lifted and followed them. It flew high 
over them and into the bay, climbing. 

"They're over it!" said an officer on a ship, 
looking at the machine through his glasses. 

Locating the Forts For the Enemy Ships 

Far inside of the bay, so high in air that it 
was little more than a shining speck, the aero- 
plane was describing a series of regular, equal 
circles. All at once, as if it had been painted 
in the air with a mammoth brush, a jet-black 
descending streak stood out against the sky, 
and lengthened steadily toward the earth. 

The azimuth and other range-finding instru- 
ments at both ends of the battle-ships caught 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 129 

the angles and ascertained the range to the 
black smear that still hung in the air, like 
grease. The aviator had dropped a smoke- 
bomb to indicate the fort below. 

The forward turret of a battleship turned, 
its hooded rifle lifted its muzzle to an angle of 
fifteen degrees, and spoke with a great voice. 

Eleven miles away a ton of steel rushed from 
the sky, crashed into the water of the bay roar- 
ing, ricochetted, struck again half a mile be- 
yond, and again and again. Four times it re- 
bounded, like a pebble, before it disappeared at 
last; and each time it filled the air with its 
clamor, like a suffering thing. 17 

The ships' wireless caught a signal from the 
aeroplane. The shot had fallen short. The 
battleship steamed on, and another one in line 
opened up the mouth of the harbor and fired. 

From the aeroplane fell a silver ball. It 
glittered in the brightening sun, splendid. 
' ' Hit ! ' ' went the message to the turret ; and the 
crew there embraced and cheered. 

17 The latest type of 16-inch naval gun has a range of 23,000 
yards or eleven and a half nautical miles, which is a little 
more than thirteen statute miles. ... A projectile from a 
12-inch rifled gun (U. S. A. coast-defense type) which wa3 
fired in the presence of the author, ricochetted seven times. 



130 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

It had hit the outer earth-works of the de- 
fenses. It had plunged down with a shock that 
stunned men in mortar pits and gun-emplace- 
ments far away — small wonder, for this thing 
falling from the sky had struck a blow equal to 
that of New York's obelisk plunging into Broad- 
way from the top of Trinity Church steeple. 18 

"No Effect!" 

"No effect !" reported the watchers in the 
coast defense to the commandant. Though the 
impact had shaken the works and the very 
earth: though the blast from the explosion of 
its charge had twisted three-inch iron bars 
within the works, and bent the steel doors of 
casemates, it had done no harm to the defenses. 
So well had they been built by the engineers 
that the rending explosion left a crater for only 
a moment. The earth rippled down and closed 
it. The steel and concrete facing underneath 
held true. 19 

is Not a fanciful description. The impact of a 12-inch 
projectile was calculated exactly by Major General Abbot, 
Chief of Engineers, U. S. A., in order to formulate a precise 
comparison. 

1 9 The writer has seen iron bars two and a half inches wide, 
which locked the steel doors to a casemate, buckle and bend 
outward from the vacuum created by the blast of a rifled gun. 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 131 

The enemy had the range. Ship after ship 
passed the entrance, delivered its single shot, 
proceeded and returned to follow in the cir- 
cling line. These were the most modern dread- 
naughts, firing from 16-inch guns. Their shells 
tore the earth embankments away in tons and 
flung dirt high in air and sent it down to bury 
everything in its way under mounds. But all 
their fire and all their havoc was in vain, unless 
they could hit a gun. And the guns were pro- 
tected by steel armor and concrete and earth 
piled on earth. 

To hit a gun was to attempt to hit a bull's 
eye only a few feet square at a range of eleven 
miles, farther than men can see. 

Still the bombardment went on, undeterred. 
More aeroplanes soared over the defenses now, 
far out of reach from shots, and circled and sig- 
naled. The fire grew. The ships were not 
hesitating now to wear out the rifling of their 
guns. They meant to give the defenders no 
rest. 

They were trying for a prize that was worth 
all the guns in their turrets. They knew that 
inside of the works there could not be more 
than a few thousand men, if that much. They 



132 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

knew that all the Coast Artillery forces of the 
United States combined numbered only 170 
companies and that these 170 companies had 27 
harbor defense systems to guard. Even if the 
United States had stripped its other defenses 
to the utmost, there could not be a sufficient 
force in these that were now being attacked. 20 

Only Enough Ammunition to Last Two Hours 

So they poured fire on fire and shot on shot. 
It was a one-sided duel, for their great guns 
outranged the 12-inch guns of the defenses. 
The men in there fired only occasionally, when 
their observers and range-finders and plotters 
perceived an opportunity. There was another 
reason for their slow fire, besides the inability 
to reach. Those perfect defenses, those per- 
fect products of engineering science, those re- 
sults of millions on millions of expenditure, 
contained only enough ammunition for two 
hours of firing ! 21 

20 Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., September 19, 
1914, pages 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15. 

2i The ammunition now on hand and under manufacture is 
73 per cent, of the allowance fixed by the National Coast De- 
fense Board. Last report to the Chief of Staff, U. S. A. . . . 
"The actual supply of ammunition at present is very con- 



THE COAST DEFENSES FALL 133 

They waited till the enemy ships should try 
to force the passage and come within range, 
that they might make those two hours two 
hours of unspeakable destruction that should 
glorify their death with the fiery splendor of 
bursting ships. 

The enemy did not try to force the passage. 
While they saved their ammunition, these de- 
fenses were fearful gladiators to approach. 
None could come within reach of their steel 
hands and live. 

But the gladiators were gladiators fearful 
only in front, Steel-gauntleted, armored with 
steel breast-plates and shin-plates, mightily 
visored — so they faced the sea. In the back 
they were naked. 

Fire, and noise, and bursting charges, and 
explosions that made hot gales within the works 
and whirled men like dried leaves! An hour 
passed. Still from the sea there came the 
coughing bellow, that made the air tremble and 
rolled inland like summer thunder among hills. 

siderably behind even that modest standard," i.e. the mini- 
mum allowance, "and in many cases of our most important 
sea-coast guns would be sufficient for only thirty or forty 
minutes of firing." — Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of 
War, March 1, 1915. 



134 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Still there fell the screaming steel from the sky. 
Another hour! And still it came. 

The snn was over-head. Suddenly, into the 
naked back of the defenses poured fire and 
steel that hammered and beat and tore through 
them. Under it, through flame and smoke and 
flying dirt appeared shining rows of bayonets. 
With a yelp 10,000 men poured in. 22 

And through the United States, smiting it 
into the dumbness of despair, went the news 
that the great Narragansett defenses had 
fallen, and that the enemy fleet was entering 
the harbor. 

22 Army and naval officers, both American and foreign, be- 
lieve that 5,000 men would be more than sufficient to take 
such works if they are manned only by their Coast Artillery 
companies and undefended by a mobile army. 



V 
NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 

Amekica had lost Narragansett Bay, with all 
its defenses, great guns and government sta- 
tions, in less than two weeks after the declara- 
tion of war ! 

The generation that faced this disaster had 
faced many catastrophes which had seemed 
great disasters. It had seen States razed by 
cyclones. It had seen giant floods. It had seen 
magnificent cities thrown down by a shaking 
earth. Unterrified, it had flung money and 
men to the stricken places to make them whole. 
Destroyed cities rose in beauty almost before 
the dust of their fall had ceased to veil the sun. 

Money, money, money! Men, men, men! It 
seemed that no disaster could be so colossal 
that the wonderful resources and efficiency of 
the United States could not mock at it. 

Before the news of Narragansett J s fall was 
an hour old, the cities of the United States, in- 

135 



136 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

eluding many towns so obscure that few Ameri- 
cans ever had heard their names, had sub- 
scribed enough money to raise and equip an 
army twice over and keep it in the field for 
months. But the country that was so efficient, 
so intrepid, so resourceful, was facing a dis- 
aster now that it could not conjure away with 
all the money and men that ever were. 

Money, the magician, was futile now. It 
could not stamp its golden foot and make guns 
and ammunition spring from the empty ground. 
It could not send to the army in Connecticut 
cannon that did not exist or cartridges that had 
not been made. 1 

Not Enough American Ammunition for Two 

Bays 1 Battle 
An order had gone out from the American 
headquarters that morning — an ominous warn- 

i We have less than one quarter of the ammunition con- 
sidered necessary as an adequate supply and reserve for our 
full number of small-arms. (Author's Note.) . . . "We 
are less adequately supplied with field artillery material than 
with any other form of fighting equipment." — Henry L. Stim- 
son, Secretary of War, 1911. ... "A full supply of this type 
of material must be stored and ready for use before war is 
undertaken." — W. W. Wother spoon, Major General, Chief of 
Staff, U. S. A., November 15, 1914, Annual Report. 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 137 

ing that, given in battle, would have indicated, 
surely, the beginning of the end. It was : 

"IT IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE THAT NO 
AMMUNITION BE EXPENDED WITHOUT URGENT 
NEED. COMPANY COMMANDERS WILL ENFORCE 
THIS ORDER RIGOROUSLY." 

While the futile dollars were being flung to 
the Government for new armies, the army that 
was already in the field was counting its small- 
arms and artillery ammunition, knowing that it 
did not possess enough for two days' battle. 2 

From ocean to ocean men with naked hands 
were crowding to enlist. The generous Nation 
that never yet had denied a need when the need 
was made apparent, was as generous with its 
lives as with its dollars. For two and three 
blocks around the recruiting stations of regular 
army and militia the streets were packed with 
men. They had come from work and pleasure. 
They had come home from far places. They 
had dropped shovels and tennis-rackets, pens 

2 It has been said authoritatively that if all the guns of 
the army should have to go into action at any one time there 
is not enough ammunition for a single day's engagement, even 
at a conservative estimate of the amount of shells expended 
by each gun. In some of the European battles, more guns 
than our whole supply were engaged on each side. 



138 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

and picks. They stood shoulder to shoulder, 
in fine stuffs and in rags, made equal by one 
loyal purpose. And they were as futile as the 
dollars. 

One million men, it was computed afterward, 
had offered themselves in America in that one 
day. But there were no weapons for them. 
There were not enough rifles. There were no 
uniforms. There were no tents. There were 
no shoes. 

Keen-eyed men of trails and wilderness of- 
fered themselves for the signal corps. There 
were no signal corps supplies. Telegraphers 
were there, but all the field telegraph outfits 
that the country had were with the army. 
Teamsters volunteered, but there was no re- 
serve of army wagons. Men trained in bridge 
building and engineering were turned away, be- 
cause there was no equipment to fit out sorely 
needed companies of miners and sappers. 3 

Cavalry was needed, urgently ; and men who 
could ride tried to enlist. But there were no 
mounts for them. Army officers in Texas and 

3 There is only enough material on hand to keep our present 
mobile army (at its present low peace strength) in the field 
for six months in the event of war. There is nothing to 
spare. 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 139 

New Mexico and Oklahoma were buying, at un- 
heard-of prices, rough horses wild from the 
range, while in Connecticut were regiments of 
regular cavalry whose troops were only three- 
quarters filled with either men or horses. 4 

Money, money, money! Men, men, men! It 
was too late. 

Newport's Palaces Occupied by Enemy 
Officers 

The bulletins still were displaying the news 
of the loss of Narragansett's defenses when 
the mine-sweepers of the enemy, unhampered 
now, completed their work in the channels 
of the great harbor and signaled to their fleet 
that it was safe to enter. 

The big liners crowded in — ships that hitherto 
never had entered an American harbor except 
New York or Boston. Followed by horse-trans- 
ports and vessels laden with artillery, they 
passed in a gigantic parade past Newport. 

Only destroyers and light-draught gun-boats 
preceded them. There was no further need of 
cruisers with shotted guns to protect them. 

4 Cavalry troops in the regular army as now constituted 
are under law rarely filled to a number of more than 70, 
while their proper complement is 100. 



140 THE INVASION OF AMEEIOA 

The enemy flag was flying over Forts Adam, 
Wetherill, Greble, Getty, and Philip Kearney. 
The American guns which the garrison had not 
been able to destroy now looked down the har- 
bor to hold it for the invader against American 
aiLacK. 

Newport's villas and palaces were occupied 
by officers of the invading army and navy. The 
avenues and gardens and shores of the rich 
men's pleasure-place were thronged with blue- 
jackets and marines. The famous power-boats, 
rich with mahogany and cedar, were brought 
out of their opulent housings and launched. 
Glittering steam yachts were being eased down 
the ways, to take the water and go into commis- 
sion under the foreign flag. 

After the last of the ships had entered, 
an American sea captain, who had been 
crouching in a hiding place on Sakonnet Point 
at the eastern entrance to the harbor, clapped 
his telescope together, arose cautiously, and 
straightened out his stiffened old limbs. Tak- 
ing great care to select by-paths, he went inland 
to the village of Little Compton, where he found 
an automobile stage that took him to the rail- 
road station at Tiverton, 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 141 

Thence he telephoned to Fall River, and Fall 
Eiver sent it on to Boston, and Boston sent it 
on to Worcester, whence it went to the army, 
that an old seaman had not only counted and 
identified the transports, but was able to say 
approximately which ships had troops aboard 
and which vessels probably carried only sup- 
plies. 

There were liners of more than 40,000 gross 
tons. There were three ships of more than 
25,000 tonnage. Each of them was a famous 
liner whose character was known to its last de- 
tails. It was a matter of only a few minutes to 
figure out that the net tonnage of the troop- 
laden vessels was 200,400. Under the foreign 
military allowance of one soldier for each two 
net tons of ship capacity, it was indicated with 
fair accuracy that the force that had entered 
the harbor was at least 100,000 men. 5 

"With the ample landing facilities/ ' said the 
American Commanding General to his staff, 
"the men can, no doubt, be disembarked within 
twenty hours. Count in the work of landing 
supplies, artillery, ammunition and horses, and 

s A comparatively small number of modern liners would be 
enough to aggregate this net tonnage. 



142 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

organizing the army for effective movement — 
we cannot safely figure on more than fifty hours 
before the enemy will be ready to undertake im- 
portant operations. He will, no doubt, have 
occupied Providence and Fall River at once." 6 

An Incident of the Occupation of Fall River 

A gunboat was lying at that moment in the 
mouth of Taunton River, with 4-inch guns cov- 
ering tall, smoky Fall River. Its officers were 
watching the signalmen who had been left be- 
hind by a detachment of marines that had been 
sent in to occupy the river streets. 

Crouching behind a third-story window of a 
square, multi-windowed monster of a cotton 
mill, three men, roughly clad, watched the blue- 
jackets approach. "I tell you," said one, "it 
is no use, no use. Have you not read the 
order! It is that we must not do anything." 

"We have been made citizens," answered the 
other, savagely. "And shall we not fight for 
this country? Go, then, you, if you fear. 
Peter and I will kill these men. Is it not so, 
Peter?" 

The man addressed nodded, silently. He 

6 Based on foreign army calculations. 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 143 

had a bomb in bis hand. The first speaker, 
shrugging his shoulder, hurried out. 

"Now!" said Peter. His comrade raised 
the window, and Peter's arm went out swiftly. 
He tossed the bomb. 

It fell in front of the blue- jackets and burst. 
The detachment reeled. But the smoke had not 
quite dissipated before the sailors were in or- 
der again, running back, dragging their ma- 
chine-gun and carrying two men, one dead, one 
wounded. 

At the corner they stopped and aimed the gun 
at the mill. There was a tearing scream, like 
the sudden yelp of a circular saw when it bites 
a plank. A stream of steel- jacketed bullets 
blew against the building. The windows van- 
ished with a clash of splintering glass. Three 
men, their heads bent low and their arms cover- 
ing their faces as if to breast a tempest of hail 
and wind, ran out of the door. They had not 
gone ten yards when they were jerked, and 
tossed high, and flung forward, and dropped 
into a heap that might have been nothing except 
a huddle of old clothes. 

The man at the machine-gun grunted. 
Squatting comfortably behind his little demon, 



144 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

he turned it on the factory again like a man 
manipulating a hose. Exactly as if he were 
sprinkling, he fanned the rows of windows, sys- 
tematically. 

Behind them the gunboat awoke. Its men 
had learned by signal what had occurred. Their 
guns opened fire on the street. Four steel pro- 
jectiles struck the brick buildings, broke 
through them and tore up floors and walls and 
girders. As the shells exploded inside, the 
walls bent outward, seemed to recover, and then 
suddenly leaned out again and toppled, with 
smoke and dust mounting into a column on a 
cyclone of their own making. 

Through the smoke and thick dust sped an- 
other flock of shells. A building at the head of 
a street moved. It seemed to jump, curiously 
like a frightened man staggering backward. 
Then there was no building. There was noth- 
ing but a pile of stone and twisted iron — with 
half a dozen men under it. 

Providence's Handful of Desperate Men 

The gunboat lowered boats and sent more 
men ashore. They rushed machine guns into 
the town. ' i Our men have been attacked, ' ' said 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 145 

their Commander, appearing at the City Hall. 
"The town is subject to punishment under the 
rules of war. Write a proclamation to your 
people at once. Inform them that a single 
other hostile act will cause your immediate exe- 
cution and the complete destruction of your 
city." 

"Fall Eiver Destroyed !" was the news that 
went through the country. It was spread by 
men who had seen the houses fall, and had run 
away in terror with the roar of tumbling walls 
and exploding shells in their ears, and who 
truly believed that they had seen the entire city 
in flame and ruin. 

"Quick! Quick !" shouted a newspaperman 
in Providence when the news came in. "Get 
this on the street with the biggest head you can 
and rush copies to the madmen at the barri- 
cade. It'll probably be the last thing we print; 
but it may save Providence." 

Behind the barricade, made of stones and 
wagons and all the useless, pitiable defenses 
that desperate men in desperate cities have 
always used, there were a hundred or more men 
who had lost their heads and would listen to 
nothing but the voice of their own fury. They 



146 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

were armed with old rifles taken from a plun- 
dered marine stored establishment whose dusty- 
cellar was piled with condemned arms. From 
the same place they had taken four automatic 
guns on rusty tripods. 

Lashing themselves to greater and blinder 
rage at every attempt at opposition or argu- 
ment, they had sworn to turn the weapons on 
their own police. But the black headlines on 
the extras that were tossed to them acted like 
the shock of ice-cold water on a drunken man. 

One by one they slouched away. When the 
enemy arrived, there was nobody to oppose the 
files of bluejackets and marines that marched 
past the silent, gloomy crowds to occupy the 
city for the troops. 

Green Scouts for the American Army 

" Reports here that Providence is occupied," 
Washington telegraphed to the army. "Send 
details. ' ' 

The General laughed sarcastically, and tossed 
the dispatch to his aide. 

"Blazes!" growled the latter. "Since they 
established their aviation camp back of their 
lines at Narragansett Pier yesterday, every 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 147 

reconnoisance we've attempted has been just 
like stirring up a nest of yellow- jackets. I'm 
afraid that we've lost another machine, sir. It 
should have been back here hours ago. If it's 
gone, we have only six left ; and our crack avia- 
tion squadron from San Diego has been 
whittled down to 14 officers and 90 enlisted men. 
They simply pile on top of every machine of 
ours with half a dozen or more of their own. ' ' 

"The mounted patrols that we pushed out 
toward the south last night got good results," 
said the General. 

"Yes, sir. But," the aide selected a sheet 
of paper from the pile, "it's like trying to build 
up a monster from a single bone. Look at this, 
sir. Here's a green patrol — plucky, too, for 
they got in farther than most. But see what 
they give us. They report a regiment of in- 
fantry at Exeter, west of Wickford; and they 
say that there is positively no artillery with it." 

' ' Of course ! ' ' answered the General. ' i They 
didn't know where to look for artillery, or how 
it is concealed. ' ' 7 

7 Modern artillery is almost invariably concealed. Ex- 
perienced soldiers would suspect that an infantry regiment 
hardly would be without at least one battery, and more prob- 
ably two, of field artillery support. 



148 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

"Nice man-trap that sort of scouting is!" 
grunted the aide. 

"Well, well!" The old General laughed 
again. "It's late in the day to kick. We've 
known long ago what sort of soup was being 
cooked for our eating. The only thing to do 
now is not to let them ladle it into us too hot. ' ' 

An officer with the insignia of the aviation 
corps appeared before the tent-flap and 
saluted. A trickle of blood was creeping down 
his forehead and across one cheek. "Hullo!" 
said the aide. "Then we haven't lost that 
machine after all! Did you get anything?" 

The Report of the Air Scout 

"Cavalry and artillery have seized all the 
railroad and electric lines to Providence," re- 
ported the flier. "Apparently they are not 
moving into the town, but holding tight so that 
the troops that are landing there can complete 
their line. Couldn't get details — three bi- 
planes got after me within twenty minutes. ' ' 

"What delayed you!" 

"They drove me south to the coast. Going 
over Kingston, I got touched up with shrapnel. 
Then two other fliers came down on me, coming 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 149 

from the direction of our own lines. I had to 
hustle across the Sound and fly around Montauk 
Point and inland before I could shake them 
off." 

"What did you see on Montauk ?" asked the 
General, quickly. 

"A small force is holding it, apparently for 
a supply and repair base," said the scout. "I 
saw a row of forges in one place." 

"That's better news, anyway," said the Gen- 
eral. "I've been anxious since we heard that 
a force had been landed there. Feared it might 
be a second army moving toward New York. 
Well, we'd better tell Washington what we've 
gathered. ' ' 

"Hostile line," Washington learned, "is 
strongly extended through Rhode Island along 
entire railroad system from Westerly north- 
east almost to Providence. Enemy's left flank 
at Westerly has been strengthened by success- 
ful assault on Fort Mansfield near Watch Hill 
whose two-company garrison was overcome be- 
fore it could destroy the 5-inch guns. 8 

8 " Unless provision is made in the near future for addi- 
tional Coast Artillery personnel, it will be necessary to reduce 
the garrisons to mere caretaker establishments at some of 



150 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

"The enemy holds in strength Westerly, 
Niantic, Wood River, Wickford Junction and 
Landing, River Point and East Greenwich, thus 
maintaining line that touches Narragansett 
Bay at one end and the ocean east of Long 
Island at the other. Extraordinarily power- 
ful artillery supports reported along entire 
front. ' ' 

"No important news from the front," said 
Washington, transmitting this information to 
the newspapers. "Providence appears to have 
been occupied, as all communication with that 
place has ceased. It is reported that two blocks 
of buildings in Fall River have been destroyed, 
but the rest of the city is intact. ' ' 

Washington had become the only source of 
news, for the time, after the foe had effected a 
base in Narragansett Bay. The coasts of New 
Jersey and Long Island suddenly had become 
as quiet again as if there were no enemy within 
three thousand miles. No demonstration was 
made against the ocean defenses of New York 
City. No ships threatened the defenses of 
Long Island Sound. 

the defenses." — E. M. Weaver, Brigadier General, Chief of 
Coast Artillery, U. S. A., September 19, 1914, Annual Report. 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 151 

The Plight of New Bedford 
Simultaneously with, the severance of com- 
munication with Providence, Boston had been 
cut off from direct communication with south- 
ern New England, and could telegraph or tele- 
phone only by way of Worcester. 

Late that night the city transmitted a dis- 
patch that had come to it from Fort Kodman, 
near New Bedford in Buzzards Bay. A strong 
force, numbers unknown, had begun moving 
along the railroad out of Fall River, with evi- 
dent design against the town or the fort. 
Trains were being assembled. "Send rein- 
forcements/ ' said Fort Rodman. "No militia 
in the city. We have in our defenses only 63 
men, Fourth Company, New Bedford Militia 
Coast Artillery, besides our own two com- 
panies of regulars and the two companies that 
were sent here from Charleston and Mobile." 9 
The morning newspapers announced that 
New Bedford was in uproar and had demanded 
of Washington to know if the Government in- 
tended to abandon its sea-board cities utterly. 
The people had gone out to tear up the railroad 

9 Actual manning detail for New Bedford defenses, 1914, 
one company regular Coast Artillery. 



152 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

tracks leading into the town, but one train of 
fifteen cars had already advanced half way from 
Fall River, with another of twelve cars behind it. 

Shortly afterward a dispatch from a station 
along the line informed Boston that three other 
trains had just passed, close behind each other, 
going slowly. One train had twelve, one had 
eight and the other had ten cars. 

"Fifty-seven cars," said the War Depart- 
ment, "would indicate that two regiments with 
artillery were on the way." 

Two hours later Washington gave out this 
bulletin : 

"New Bedford was occupied at nine a. m. by 
a regiment of infantry and three batteries of 
heavy field artillery. Shortly before 10 a. m. 
this force, augmented by a further regiment of 
infantry, a strong body of sappers and miners, 
and a battery of howitzers, proceeded in the 
direction of Fort Rodman. Since then it has 
been impossible to gain any intelligence." 

The Demand of the Cities for Protection 

At noon an enemy force of unknown strength 
advanced toward Taunton, Massachusetts, by 
way of the railroad running north from Fall 




(QBrown Bros., N. Y, 



The people had gone out to tear up the railroad tracks lead- 
ing into the town." 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 153 

Eiver. It was reported that two companies of 
infantry, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, had 
attacked enemy cavalry outside of the town and 
had defeated it. A little later came a report 
that the Americans had been surrounded and 
forced to surrender. 

Then Taunton was cut off. Boston tele- 
graphed to Washington: "We have practic- 
ally stripped ourselves of militia and demand 
help at once." 

"Hold the army where it is !" said New York, 
promptly. "To move it toward Boston would 
simply uncover us, and open all Connecticut to 
capture. ' ' 

"Protect Boston!" demanded Lawrence and 
Lowell and Haverhill. 

"Hold the army in Connecticut!" tele- 
graphed New London and New Haven, Bridge- 
port and Hartford. 

"Most of our militia is with the army!" 
urged Philadelphia. "We insist that our men 
be kept between us and the foe." 

"What is the disposition of the enemy forces 
now?" Washington asked army headquarters. 

"Disembarkation proceeding swiftly," was 
the reply. "The line Providence to New Bed- 



154 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

ford appears to be strongly held. Main 
strength, however, evidently being thrown to 
face onr front. The original army is being 
steadily augmented by additions from the 
forces now landing. Believe that hostile line 
stretching across Rhode Island and threatening 
us is now fully eighty thousand men, with pre- 
ponderating artillery." 

The news bulletin that the War Department 
in Washington gave out as a result of this in- 
formation was that the American army, though 
numerically inferior, was holding the invader 
in check for the time. No immediate move- 
ment, said the bulletin, was expected. 

To the General in command, however, the 
Department telegraphed : ' ' It is of the utmost 
importance to know if you can maintain present 
position, and if so, how long. We wish to work 
Springfield arsenal to the last moment. Must 
have twenty-four hours to dismantle it and ship 
machinery away." 

Two Days in Which to Make Ammunition 
for the American Army! 

Springfield Arsenal, lying behind the pro- 
tecting army, was a-glare with light at night 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 155 

and a-roar night and day with labor. It was 
toiling almost literally over a mine; for the 
foundations were mined, ready for the dyna- 
mite that was to blow them up when the need 
came. 

An army of workmen, each provided with his 
own specific instruction, were ready, when the 
word came, to tear out what machinery they 

could and load it on the trains. 10 

Thus, with men standing ready to pull it 
apart, the great place was being " speeded" to 
turn out rifles. Under civilian and military 
experts all the workers who could find room 
were working in eight-hour shifts. They had 
increased the output from the normal one hun- 
dred rifles an hour to three thousand in the 
twenty-four hours. 

"Forces in our front constantly increasing," 
the army leaders informed Washington, after 
a council of war. "No doubt of offensive in- 
tention. We believe, however, that no forward 
movement will be made until completion of 

10 There is said to be only one firm in the United States 
that can produce the rifling tools, jigs, gauges and other 
exact and intricate machinery needed to make a rifle. Con- 
sequently, the loss of the Springfield Arsenal would be dis- 
astrous. 



156 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

landing operations. The total destruction of 
all roads in our front will then delay enemy for 
not more than two days. Think it safe to de- 
lay dismantling works till expiration of that 
time. ' ' 

".Thank God!" said one of the men in Wash- 
ton. He was thanking God for two days of 
grace — after fifty years of unused time. Two 
short days had become suddenly precious. In 
that time there could be added to the stock of 
arms 6,000 rifles before the Springfield works 
should have to be abandoned and the country 
forced to depend on the output of the Rock Is- 
land arsenal in Illinois, whose utmost capacity 
was only two hundred and fifty rifles in each 
eight-hour day. 11 

Militia That Had Come in Without Rifles 

Already, without a battle, the army had made 
requisition for 2,500 new rifles. The militia 
had come in with many rifles corroded from the 
powerful fumes and acid deposits released by 
smokeless powder. The rifling of many was 
ruined by rust, due to lack of cleaning after use. 

n Official statistics. 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 157 

In more than one militia company there were 
men who had come in without rifles. 12 

Beholding this wastage that had occurred in 
peace, the authorities were inclined to believe 
the dictum of some of the military men who in- 
sisted that for every infantryman in the field 
there must be a rifle in reserve. Certainly it 
was evident enough that when fighting should 
once begin, the waste of small arms would be 
enormous. 13 

Two days more ! The word went secretly to 
Hartford and Ansonia, to Bridgeport, to New 
Haven, to all the crowded world of Connecticut 
and southern Massachusetts where machines 
were panting night and day, buildings trembling 
with their steam fever, men toiling without 
sleep, to take advantage of the days of grace. 

It was not only the brass cases for the fixed 

12 Large numbers of guns and large numbers of ammunition 
are liable to capture and destruction. ... To start into field 
operations with the expectation that the proper proportions 
will be maintained without large sources of manufacture, would 
be fallacious."— Chief of Staff, U. S. A., 1914.— See Report on 
Militia Organization, 1914, for comments on the great loss and 
destruction of equipment and material. 

is Some observers of the European War declare that the 
reserve of one gun per man has proved itself necessary for 
the proper equipment of an active army. 



158 THE INVASION OF AMEKICA 

ammunition, the fuses for shells, the cartridges 
for rifles and pistols, the bayonets and entrench- 
ing tools for which the army depended on New 
England. A hundred places of peaceful manu- 
facture were working as desperately as were 
the manufacturers of quick-firing guns, to pro- 
vide the food that war devours with such mon- 
strous rapacity when it begins to feed. 

There were shops that turned out chains, and 
shops that turned out cooking utensils. There 
were workmen who never had done anything 
more warlike than to make bootlaces. There 
were manufacturers of whips and hats, and 
wheelwrights and makers of thread. Up and 
down all the river valleys, and in all the 
crowded towns they were working to give the 
army what it needed before the enemy should 
reach out and make the land his own. 

Now that it was on the verge of being lost, 
the United States knew suddenly what this New 
England meant to it. It realized all at once 
what vast productiveness had enriched the en- 
tire Continent with its manifold variety. So 
accustomed through long generations to the 
endless supply, even the merchants of America 
had not realized how much they depended on 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 159 

Connecticut and Massachusetts factories for a 
thousand articles of daily utility. 

From every point in the Union came orders. 
Had such a torrent arrived in a time of peace, 
Connecticut might have built one unbroken fac- 
tory reaching from the Berkshire Hills to 
Stonington, to meet the demand. 

"We Will Play Our Hand Out!' 9 

And all that lay between this treasure-house 
of the .United States and capture was a bluff — 
a last, desperate American bluff. 

The American General knew that his adver- 
sary must know that it was a bluff ; but bluffing 
was an American game. 

"We will play our hand out," he said to his 
staff. ' ' No doubt he knows that he could drive 
us back now, without waiting for his whole 
army to land, and all that ungodly mess of ar- 
tillery that he's brought with him. But he 
wants to play safe. He wants to clean the 
whole thing up in one operation. He wants 
to lick us, true; but he wants still more to ac- 
complish his bigger job — the possession of the 
seaboard. We'll sit tight — and bluff him into 
going slow." 



160 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

The army sat tight. It sat tight while New 
England worked, and Chambers of Commerce 
and Committees of Safety argued and resolved 
and argued and could agree on nothing except 
that the whole thing was a hopeless mess. It 
sat tight while a hundred millions stared at the 
mess, and hooted their Congressmen and poli- 
ticians who wandered around feebly to explain 
that it was the fault of somebody else. 

In Ohio and Indiana the mess was typified. 
Here in great camps were gathered the organ- 
ized militia of the western States to be organ- 
ized, with 300,000 entirely raw volunteers who 
had everything to learn. These green men 
were the pick of the country — physically per- 
fect, intelligent, quick to understand. But 
there was nobody to teach them. 

For years the United States had been warned 
that if the crisis ever should occur, there would 
not be any officers available for the work of 
organizing and training recruits. The warn- 
ing had been whistled down the wind. Con- 
gresses that could find ample time to debate 
about mileage and constructive recesses and 
pork barrels had never found a time when they 
could debate this. 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 161 

Congresses that could always find the money 
for increased pension rolls never had been able 
to find the time to lessen the pension rolls of 
the future by providing trained officers who 
would protect their soldiers and teach them to 
stay alive as long as possible instead of rushing 
to glorious and unnecessary death. 14 

Even as it was, there were not enough officers 
for the army that was in the field. For train- 
ing the new men, the Nation had to call on every 
aged officer in the land, on every otherwise 
qualified man who was physically unfit for 
active service, and on foreigners from foreign 
armies. 

A Land Lacking in War Efficiency 

This army in formation was placed in perfect 
surroundings. Its health, its sanitation and 
its water-supply were excellent. It was fed on 

14 " He," i.e., Secretary Garrison, present Secretary of War, 
" asks for an increase in the number of officers to take the 
place, in time of peace, of such officers as are serving with the 
militia or on detached duty, and in time of war to assist in 
the organization of the citizens' army. The necessity of 
these requests is self-evident. Yet the House of Representa- 
tives has completely ignored each and every one of them, and 
the pending appropriation bill contains no provision for them." 
— Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War. 



162 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

the best that money could buy. In everything 
that did not depend on military efficiency, its 
maintenance was beyond criticism. 

Uniforms were being made for it in record 
time. Mills were producing blankets at a speed 
never before reached. Wherever Americans 
could help by the efficient execution of duties 
that they understood, the result was magnifi- 
cent. 

But in everything that demanded the effi- 
ciency of men trained to war, the land was en- 
tirely lacking. Everything had to be impro- 
vised. There were only a few men who knew 
anything about pitching tents, camp drainage, 
and the management of large bodies of men. 
There were practically no men outside of the 
army who were capable of managing the work 
of supplying the great camps with what they 
needed. As in the Spanish- American War, the 
utter inadequacy of the Quartermaster's De- 
partment under its civilian appointees had be- 
come a scandal within a few weeks, and threat- 
ened already to demoralize the entire volun- 
teer body. 

Perishable provisions were left in freight 
cars till they rotted. Requisitions for vitally 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 163 

needed supplies were not made until it was too 
late. Eequisitions for one and the same thing 
were sent out by half a dozen different officials, 
leading to inextricable confusion. There was 
not an hour in the day when quartermaster's 
transports did not block roads where they had 
no business to be, and in situations that in war 
would have made disaster for a hurrying 
army. 15 

"Six months to train that mob?" said a re- 
tired General, reporting to the President. 
"Well, Mr. President, let's hope so. I should 
say nine months, and not even then unless you 
can give 'em more officers to teach 'em." 

The News the Spy Brought 

In Connecticut a spy was reporting to the 
staff. He was a Captain of Artillery, and he 
had spent seventy-two hours behind the enemy 's 
lines. 

"They have completed their disembarkation 
and organization," he said. "There are at 
least 150,000 men, as was calculated. They are 

is The scandal caused in 1898 by appointing incompetent 
civilians to the Quartermaster's Department and the ensuing 
difficulties with commissariat, etc., have been the subject of 
much discussion. 



164 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

magnificently organized, with reserves of every- 
thing. They have an enormous supply of ar- 
tillery — at least ten guns to every thousand in- 
fantry and cavalry. Their machine gun com- 
panies also are extraordinarily large." 16 

"And what is their disposition? " 

"They were still moving men around to our 
front, ' ' answered the spy. ' ' I should say, Gen- 
eral, that you now have, or will have before the 
end of the day, approximately one hundred 
thousand men facing you." 

"And the others!" 

"Everything indicates that they are plan- 
ning to move against Boston, while the larger 
force attacks us, sir. Country people told me 
that they are holding Taunton now with a 
strong force. They were moving men through 
Pawtucket this morning on the Providence rail- 
road line for Boston." 

is Our War Department has asked for only about five guns 
to every thousand men, but has not yet been able to have this 
quota finished. European practice has been to increase the 
number of guns to the thousand rifles and sabers steadily. 
Before the war it was at least five. It has been enormously 
increased as a result of the experience gained during the 
recent fighting, in which it was established that infantry or 
cavalry without absolutely dominating gun protection were 
hopelessly weak. 



NEW ENGLAND'S BATTLE 165 

"Did you see any movement that might men- 
ace Worcester immediately V 

"They have already repaired the railroad 
from Providence to Woonsocket." 

"Then it's time for ns to get out of this. 
Gentlemen, you all know what to do. Issue 
your orders at once." 

The Retreat of the American Army 

Eight hours later the enemy army advanced 
suddenly. Its southern wing pushed forward, 
across Ehode Island and entered Connecticut. 
Its northern wing, advancing more slowly be- 
cause it had to repair railroads and clear 
obstructed roads before it, extended itself 
gradually northward toward Worcester. 

The extreme southern line, advancing from 
Westerly, took Stonington, Groton and the 
new London Navy Yard, and held the eastern 
shore of the Thames Kiver. Another force 
took Norwich and crossed the Thames at that 
place. 

Gradually the line straightened out and 
formed into the drive that was to sweep the 
American army before it, or crush it. But the 
American army, with everything lacking ex- 



166 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

cept transport, was not there, either to be 
swept or crushed. It was retreating swiftly, 
in perfect order. 

As the last wheel rolled out of Springfield, 
the town shook with the explosions that were 
wrecking the dismantled arsenal. 

Eastward, two divisions of enemy forces, 
perfectly appointed to act as independent 
armies, were converging on Boston. 



VI 
THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 

New England was filmy red with bursting 
maple buds. Silver troops of rain floated over 
the low hills in the dawn, and left April shin- 
ing. The orderly land lay lovely and serene 
under the tranquil blessing of the New Eng- 
land spring whose memory draws its sons, soon 
or late, from all the worlds places to go home. 

It was such a morning "promising to become 
hot" as had lain on Massachusetts in the dawn 
of April 19, 1775, when men were gathering at 
Concord and Lexington. 

The country was as still as it must have been 
in that far-off day. The mill-towns were still 
and smokeless. The machineries were still. 
There was no cry of plowmen in the fields. 

It was a supine New England, hushed, ap- 
prehensive and conquered. So, at least, it 
seemed to the invaders whose patrols, spread- 
ing fanwise, were beginning to pierce the coun- 
try in all directions, pushing forward far in 

167 



168 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

advance of their armies, and rinding no oppo- 
sition. 

Through New England the church and town 
clocks struck: Seven. The land was peaceful 
as death. The hour passed. The lazy clocks 
began to strike : Eight. 

In a village north of New Bedford stood a 
little crowd of farmers, gathered around the 
general store and listening to the sheriff. He 
was warning them that they must not attempt 
to resist the invading troops when they came. 

"I know that you — and you," said he, point- 
ing to men as he spoke, " brought arms with 
you. You'd better give them up to me." 

"And you an American!" growled one of 
the men. The sheriff did not retort. He was 
scarcely past middle age; but there was a 
great, slow patience in his face that made him 
look old. 

He shook his head and said: "It's only for 
your own sake." 

The Modern Paul Revere 

"Look!" cried a farmer. "Who is coming 
here?" 

The man who was coming was a man on a 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 169 

motorcycle. Man and machine were so coated 
with dust, were speeding so desperately, that 
even without war in the land one would stare 
at this flying thing, one would wait with eyes 
and lips open to learn what startling message 
it was carrying. 

Man, roaring motor, and their brother pillar 
of dust crashed by. They had disappeared be- 
fore the breathless watchers realized that the 
man had waved an arm at them and had 
screamed: " Soldiers !" 

A farmer ran to his wagon and pulled out a 
rifle from its hiding place under the wagon- 
seat. "Come on, boys!" he said. 

"Listen! Listen !" The sheriff shouldered 
forward. "Men! Neighbors! Old friends! 
For God's sake, listen! You have no right to 
fight." 

"What?" The sheriff's young brother, 
sturdy, handsome, suddenly ferocious, brought 
his face close to him. "No right to defend our 
country! Are you crazy, Jim?" 

The patient man shook his head again. "It 
is against the rules of war." 

"Then curse the rules of war!" shouted the 
younger. "Are you a coward?" 



170 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

The sheriff reached out and touched his 
brother's arm. It was a secret, almost a timid, 
act. The brother threw off the appealing hand. 

" Don't touch me!" He spoke through set 
teeth. "If you are a coward and traitor, may 
you be damned through all eternity! Again! 
For the last time! Will you fight V 

The sheriff raised his hands, dumbly. The 
men went to their wagons and returned with 
arms. 

New England's Stone Wall 

"To that stone wall yonder !" said one. 

He pointed into a field with a rough stone 
wall dividing its center three or four hundred 
yards from the road. This man was an old 
hunter, and the others had followed him often. 
He took command now as a matter of course. 

The sheriff watched them flounder through 
the plowed field. He stood still, for a minute. 
Then he hurried to his house, emerged with a 
gun, and joined the party. 

Two miles away a squad of ten cavalrymen 
cantered over a ridge and examined the coun- 
try through their field-glasses. They studied 
the ground foot by foot, almost inch by inch. 



THE KISING OF NEW ENGLAND 171 

Satisfied, they trotted toward the village. 

Around a turn they came on a little knot of 
women and children who scurried, screaming, 
into the ditch. A rider headed off a woman 
who was carrying a child. He stooped to her 
from his tall black horse. Laughing, he nodded 
and said something to her in a foreign lan- 
guage. 

Stooping still lower, he snatched the child 
suddenly and swung it out of the trembling 
woman's arm. He lifted it, and danced it up 
and down. 

He fumbled in his saddle-bag and brought 
out some chocolate which he fed to the baby. 
Then he handed it back to the mother, roaring 
again with laughter at her frightened face. 
The other riders, laughing also, waved their 
hands at the group and cantered on. 

They entered the village, swiftly examined 
it, riding through gardens and into alleys, as- 
suring themselves that there was nothing there 
to mask danger for the troops that were behind 
them. They passed out of the other end and 
into the road leading past the plowed field with 
the stone wall. 

It was still, and very lonely. There was not 



172 THE INVASION OF AMEBICA 

a living being in sight throughout all the softly 
tinted land. On a tree branch that hung over 
the stone wall, a bluebird began to sing with 
all the power of its little throat. 

It brought a hot choking to the throat of a 
farmer who was lying behind the stone wall, 
just under the bird. Its song had welled out 
just as he was raising his rifle. But his gray 
Yankee eye sought the sights, his sinewy brown 
hand gripped the weapon, and he fired. 

The Firing of the First Shot 

He fired, and pumped another cartridge into 
the breech and fired again, so quickly that his 
second shot had roared out before a cavalry- 
man who had pitched forward with the first 
bullet through his side, had quite toppled from 
his saddle. 

All along the stone wall they fired, and 
pumped their magazines, and fired. They 
were men who had hunted deer in early autumn 
cover and learned to send bullets driving after 
them at hot speed on the jump. The big horses 
and the big men, broad in the open road, were 
easy targets. But they were not deer. They 
were men. More than one of the rifle bullets 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 173 

went wild because the marksman's horror 
shook his hand. 

In the road lay two men, lashing in the dust. 
Down the road went a bleeding horse that 
screamed. It dragged its rider, smashing his 
face against the ground. In the field was a 
soldier, trying to balance himself on his saddle, 
with one hand gripping at his breast while the 
other reached out grotesquely, as if groping for 
something to which he might hold. 

A farmer behind the wall, unable to endure 
the sight of the men who were rolling in the 
road like animals trying to bury their agony, 
fired at them and made them lie still. "My 
God!" he said, and cried. 

The wounded man fell from the saddle and 
squatted in a queer hunched posture in the 
field, his head between his knees. It was the 
cavalryman who had fed the child. 

The others scattered, and charged toward 
the wall. Instantly, the defenders became 
cool. Their nerves stopped jumping. These 
riders, looming big, with swords out and fury 
in their eyes, ceased to be men. They were 
killers. The farmers shot as steadily as if 
they were aiming at deer. 



174 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

Two riders escaped and galloped headlong 
down the road back to their forces. The New 
England men arose from behind the wall, and 
ran across the fields to gain the shelter of a 
wood-lot. Before they could reach it, there 
was a yelling behind them and a dozen troop- 
ers were in the fields, following them des- 
perately. 

In the Stone House 

"To the house !" cried the sheriff. He led 
the way to an old stone house, built in Revolu- 
tionary times. The cavalrymen reined up 
sharply. A glance at the solid little building 
with window-openings as deep as embrasures, 
showed them that it was dangerous. They 
opened out, remaining carefully out of rifle 
shot, and surrounded the place where they 
could watch it from all sides. Then one rode 
back, swiftly. 

The watchers sat, easy and careless, as if 
they had been halted during a peaceful practice 
march. Half an hour passed. The immobil- 
ity of the soldiers, their passionless watch, was 
driving the farmers frantic. More than once 
the old leader had to growl at a man who 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 175 

wanted to fire, despite the hopeless distance. 

If the tension in the house had lasted much 
longer, some of these men would have rushed 
out. But there came a great sound from the 
distance. It might have been thunder, rolling 
far away. It might have been a river in flood. 

" They're coming !" said the sheriff's 
brother. It was hard for him to speak. The 
defenders were all violently thirsty, and they 
had not had time to bring water from the well. 

They came. Horses, horses, horses! Bay- 
onets, bayonets, bayonets! They came, and 
passed along the road, and more came on. 

They did not turn off to attack the house. 
They did not even turn their heads to look at 
it. This infuriated the defenders. 

Horses, horses, horses ! Bayonets, bayonets, 
bayonets ! If the men in the stone house could 
have seen other roads, they would have seen 
each one so filled with silent, steadily moving 
columns of men. 

A little party of men and horses turned off 
from the column and entered the field. Before 
it was within the range of the rifles, it wheeled. 
A shining, glossy little thing pointed at the 
house. It was field artillery, sleek, beautiful. 



176 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

The sheriff's brother, carried away by rage, 
fired and fired. He emptied his magazine at 
the distant men. 

The War Machine Rolls On 

Along the highway the column moved stead- 
ily, silently. No soldier checked his foot for 
so much as an instant at the sound of the shots. 
Bayonets, bayonets, bayonets! The machine 
moved on. 

It moved on, eyes front, while the captain 
commanding the cannon snapped an order. It 
moved on, bayonets twinkling out of sight in 
front, and twinkling past, and twinkling into 
sight from behind, while the little gun tore the 
April morning. 

The stone house spouted clouds of dust and 
powdering stone. It dissolved. It became a 
ruin that stared phantomlike through the cloud, 
as if it were looking with horribly expanding 
eyes at the gun. 

If the besieged fired in return, the men at 
the gun did not know it. Their steel beast 
drowned the farmers' tiny efforts in roar and 
flame. They passed as a breath. The cavalry- 
men cantered to the ruin. A half wall was 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 177 

standing, jagged. The rest was a mound of 
dirt. Under it lay fourteen men of Massachu- 
setts. The sheriff lay there, with his face more 
patient than ever, and his arm around his 
brother. 

The little gun and its horses and men joined 
the horses and men that were moving north- 
ward through New England. 

Over the field telegraph wire that unreeled 
behind the advancing force went the report 
to the enemy headquarters: " Civilians esti- 
mated at about a dozen fired from ambush, 
killing eight cavalry. Took refuge in building. 
Annihilated. ' ' 

It was a perfunctory report telling of a 
merely perfunctory incident. But the com- 
mander-in-chief, sitting at his ease in head- 
quarters in Providence, stopped smoking for a 
moment. < < See that the news does not spread, ' > 
said he. "It might raise the country. Keen- 
force all patrols and warn them." 

New England Ablaze 

He was a quick man. His officers were 
quick and his system of communication was 
quick. But the news sped more quickly still. 



178 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

Over every telephone that was intact, over 
every telegraph wire that still worked in New 
England, by bicycle, on horseback, by men run- 
ning, the story was passed from man to man 
and village to village. 

They were fourteen humble men, unknown 
beyond their own township, when they crouched 
behind the stone wall. They were fourteen 
shining names before the ruins that covered 
them had ceased smoking. New England, like 
a blazing forest, was ablaze with wrath and 
fury. 

Vain was it now for cautious men to warn 
or authorities to command. Men who never in 
their lives had thought harm to any living 
thing, dashed out with smoldering eyes to 
fight. Prudent men, who never in their lives 
had acted on impulse, now acted without a 
second's pause for reflection. Men who had 
cared all their lives only for their own little 
affairs, were all drunken now and thought it 
nothing to fire one shot for their country and 
die behind a stone wall in the dirt. 

In Acushnet an old whaling captain, a pros- 
perous, weighty citizen, emptied his shot gun 
into a raiding party and was left dead under 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 179 

his forsythias with the golden blossoms from 
the volley-torn shrubs covering him. 

Between Taunton and Pawtucket a militia 
company of field artillery that had been unable 
to move its gun because it lacked horses, got it 
from its hiding place, and with a party of vol- 
unteers who had no firearms, fought behind 
piled bags of cement against enemy cavalry till 
artillery had to be brought from miles away to 
destroy them. 

South of Woonsocket a band, made up of 
thirty Massachusetts militia infantry and sixty 
factory hands from the town, prevented two 
companies of hostile infantry for almost two 
hours from crossing the Blackstone River. It 
was not because they could shoot, or knew how 
to fight. It was because they meant to stay 
there till they died. And it was not until they 
were dead that the invaders succeeded in cross- 
ing. 

New England women who had spent their 
lives in homely, simple duties, brought out dip- 
pers of water to parched men and cheered them 
on. They hid fleeing men in barns and stood 
by, defiant, when pursuing soldiers dragged 
them out and shot them before their eyes. 



180 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

As the Men of Old 

Men took down old muskets that had been 
over chimney-places for a generation. Their 
wives and mothers kissed them as they went 
out to fight. 

Grandparents saw their sons and their sons' 
sons lie in ambush in ancestral pastures that 
had not echoed to a ruder sound than the low- 
ing of cows; and they saw them vanish away 
in red storm, and did not weep. 

Dynamite! Dynamite! went the word 
through Massachusetts and Connecticut. This 
was something that the unarmed country had, 
and that it knew how to use. Even the peace- 
ful farmers had it, and were practiced in han- 
dling it, from long work in blowing out stumps 
and rocks. Irish construction gangs, Italian 
road-makers, workers of every tongue and race 
from pits and quarries, joined the New Eng- 
land men. 

They blew up a sunken road through which 
artillery was lumbering. They blasted away a 
steep bank and buried a troop of cavalry. 
They blew up a mined road in front of infantry 
and when it retreated, sprang a second mine 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 181 

under the soldiers' feet that exterminated a 
battalion. 

Railroads and roads were blown up before 
advancing troops and behind them. Men blew 
up bridges and prevented their own escape so 
that the armed forces caught them as in a trap 
and slaughtered them at leisure. Viaducts 
and works were dynamited that never could 
have been of any use to the enemy. It was 
formless, systemless destruction — but in that 
very lack of system lay its danger to the enemy 
forces. 

Had all the men in New England who were 
engaged in this wild fighting been gathered in 
one body, the trained, disciplined soldiers could 
have disposed of them in an action so simple 
that they might scarcely have named it a skir- 
mish. But this was like a forest fire that, 
stamped out in one spot, breaks into roaring 
flame in another. As it sweeps from tree tops 
to tree tops and creeps underground, and 
flames out in quick fury miles away, so the war- 
fire raved through Massachusetts and Con- 
necticut to be crushed out only in detail with 
detailed, bitter work through all that long, hot, 
dusty day. 



182 THE INVASION OF AMEBICA 

Serious to the Enemy 

It was serious. This uprising of an undis- 
ciplined population could not defeat, or even 
damage seriously, the great army. But it could 
hamper it. It would force a wide scattering of 
troops to break down the sporadic opposition. 
It would make a dangerous country — danger- 
ous in front of the advancing soldiers, danger- 
ous in their rear, continually dangerous around 
them. 

In that sense it was more serious than delib- 
erate, military opposition by the American 
army would have been. Had the enemy com- 
mander faced only a defending army, it would 
have been a quiet, technical matter of advance 
guards against advance guards. These pawns 
in the old game of war would have thrust each 
other back here, receded before each other 
there, fighting only when it was forced on them, 
and so, gradually, properly, they would have 
cleared the board that the great game might be 
played. 

This incoherent uprising was disorganizing 
all his tactics. From the western army that 
had set out to sweep through Connecticut, came 




©Brown Bros., N. Y. 



" There had been firing from mill-buildings, which had been 
destroyed for punishment." 



THE EISING OF NEW ENGLAND 183 

word that everywhere patrols had been at- 
tacked. Men in a swift power boat on the 
Thames Eiver above New London had suc- 
ceeded in three places in firing on scouting par- 
ties with a Hotchkiss rifle, apparently taken 
from a yacht. 

The line north of Norwich along the same 
river reported four men killed from ambush. 
At Willimantic there had been firing from mill 
buildings, which had been destroyed for punish- 
ment. 

The Commander of the brigade that was ad- 
vancing on Worcester in Massachusetts from 
Connecticut had halted his advance, and was 
asking headquarters if the extent of the dis- 
order were great enough to imperil his com- 
munications. 

The eastern division, moving on Boston, re- 
ported that the patrols had been ordered in 
from the line North Middleboro— East Middle- 
boro — Plymouth. "Our men can move only in 
considerable force," reported the Commander. 
"Small parties are constantly in danger of be- 
ing assassinated. The population appears to 
be in a frenzy. Seven cavalry at Nemasket, en- 
gaged in foraging for their horses, were burned 



184 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

alive in a barn. We have fired the town. It 
is still burning. Have shot ten citizens." 

"My men are getting out of hand," tele- 
graphed the Commander of a brigade moving 
toward Mansfield. " Stern reprisals required 
at once." 

"Let Them Have It!" 

"Let them have it!" said the Commander-in- 
Chief. 

"Instant retaliation ! " said the field telegraph 
to the armies. ' ' Order all brigade commanders 
to execute disorderly civilians in most public 
and exemplary manner possible. Attach pla- 
card to bodies proclaiming why punishment was 
incurred. Divisional commanders are em- 
powered in their discretion to order partial or 
total destruction of offending cities." 

The commanders transmitted the orders to 
their regimental commanders, and these to the 
officers of their battalions and companies. 
"Crush all disorder with utmost severity," they 
said. What it meant was : ' ' Kill, burn and de- 
stroy ! " It meant : i i Set fury against fury ! ' ' 
It meant : ' ' Let your men go ! " 

It meant what a war of soldiers against bat- 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 185 

tling civilians in a conquered country always 
has meant. Both sides had seen their dead. 
Both sides were maddened. Now the men with 
arms, restrained no longer by cold discipline, 
broke loose. 

Then New England saw such deeds as that 
quiet landscape never had framed since the days 
of its old Indian wars, and perhaps not even 
then. It saw housewives hanging from bud- 
ding apple-trees, with placards pinned to their 
breasts saying that they had helped to murder 
soldiers. It saw New England people, who, 
twenty-four hours earlier would not have killed 
a chicken without a pang of pity, surround soli- 
tary soldiers and do them to death with their 
bare hands, while they begged for mercy. It 
saw unarmed citizens seized on the roads and 
hustled to walls and shot while they were 
screaming for somebody in authority, that they 
might prove their innocence. 

The authorities of a score of towns were 
hanged in their town squares because troops 
had been fired on. In many a park that never 
had seen anything more formidable than chil- 
dren at their play, hung dead men in a row — the 
executed hostages who paid for the acts of men 



186 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

whom they had not known. A thousand men 
and women of Connecticut and Massachusetts, 
it was reported later, were shot or hanged in 
that one afternoon. 

New England's Funeral Curtain 

And over the two States, rising slowly and 
spreading until the sunny sky was darkened, 
there hung, like a funeral curtain over the place 
of death, the black smoke of burning villages 
and towns. 

When that April day ended, and the night 
came down, there was no place in eastern Con- 
necticut, in all the seventy miles north and 
south from New London to Worcester where 
men could not see the fire of burning towns or 
houses. In Massachusetts from New Bedford 
to Taunton, and from Taunton north to Brock- 
ton, there were fires. All the sky around Provi- 
dence was red with it. The smoke drifted over 
Boston and the strangling odor filled its streets. 

All night the country burned. All night 
wounded fugitives lay hidden, gritting their 
teeth, or, forced by intolerable anguish, crawled 
out and surrendered. All night long the troops 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 187 

swept through town after town, wreaking 
vengeance. 

It was finished in the morning. "The conn- 
try is pacified/ ' were the reports that went to 
headquarters. There were no gatherings of 
citizens anywhere within the province of the 
army's operations. They were forbidden. 
There were no arms left in the hands of civil- 
ians. Houses in which weapons were found 
had been destroyed. Men who had been found 
with them in their possession were shot. Men 
with explosives were shot. In all New Eng- 
land that morning, every man had to be ready, 
for his life, to hold out his open hands whenever 
he met a soldier, and submit to search. 

The Machine Shakes Down 

Through the two armies ran the orders to re- 
store stiff discipline. The soldiers came to 
leash and the big machine shook down. The 
patrols went out grimly, with a new meaning in 
their peering, scrutinizing frowns. They found 
a terrorized country, through which they 
moved unhampered. 

" Worcester Occupied' ' was the early news 



188 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

that went through the United States. "Heavy- 
Cavalry Body Enters Unopposed.' ' 

"Motor Raiders at Fitchburg," was the next 
report. It was followed by news of raiders east 
of Worcester. 

Bit by bit the enemy was cutting Boston and 
all Eastern New England off from the rest of 
the United States. 

East of Providence the advance guard of the 
army that was threatening Boston reached the 
line from Attleboro through Bridge water and 
Silver Lake to Kingston, thus extending across 
that part of Massachusetts all the way to Ply- 
mouth Bay. 1 

Taunton, according to rumors that reached 
Boston, was being made the point for a heavy 
concentration of men and rolling stock. 

Washington received news of an enormous 
unfolding of cavalry. The reports came from 
East Brookfield, half way between Worcester 
and Springfield in southern Massachusetts; 

i These movements of advance bodies and patrols have been 
carefully worked out as a campaign problem. The lines of ad- 
vance mentioned are those that present themselves to military 
observers as the ones most likely to be selected by an invading 
army moving toward Boston from a base on Narragansett 
Bay or Buzzards Bay. 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 189 

from Willimantic in Central Connecticut, and 
from New London on the Long Island Sound 
shore in the south. Every road across the 
whole State north and south was held by horse- 
men who were pressing steadily westward, con- 
verting all means of communication to the 
army's use and cutting off the population com- 
pletely from the outside and even from com- 
municating with each other. 2 

From Attleboro there was a sudden thrust 
along the railroad line Taunton to Mansfield. 
From this point the enemy moved rapidly along 
the railroad line to Framingham. In two hours 
he had in his possession six important junc- 
tions of the railroad systems that connect Bos- 
ton with the rest of New England and with the 
United States. 

Encircling Boston 

The enemy was making good a great line that 
extended in a semi-circle from the west of 
Boston to the coast south of it. 

His grip on Rhode Island had not relaxed. 
That whole State was in his hands. There was 

2 So laid down as the most likely movement to be made by 
invading armies with heavy cavalry supports. 



190 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

not a village left in it that was not dominated 
by his troops. Men were quartered in every 
house. Officers were quartered in every hotel, 
every mansion. The town halls and churches 
were occupied. In places where there were not 
sufficient stable accommodations, the horses 
were placed in the churches. 

There were proud homes there, in * * little 
Ehode Island," where crossed swords over the 
old-fashioned mantel-pieces bore witnesses to 
ancestors who had fought on land and sea in the 
Wars of the Eevolution and of 1812. Foreign 
soldiers sat under them, and spread out maps of 
the State on the floors while they debated over 
the best use to make of roads and houses and 
towns. 

Town and village authorities received orders, 
not from officers, but from common soldiers, or, 
at the most, from sergeants or corporals. 
Only in the most important places did commis- 
sioned officers trouble to consult with the of- 
ficials. Mostly, they limited themselves to 
sending their requisitions and instructions in 
curtly written notes. 

So it was everywhere throughout the con- 
quered country. Wherever the invader set 



THE EISING OF NEW ENGLAND 191 

foot, all old law ceased instantly and new law 
began. The bulletin boards in town halls, court 
rooms and post offices were covered, within half 
an hour after the irruption of soldiery, by pla- 
cards that were headed, each and every one, 
with the words : ' ' An Order. ' ' 

The people were ordered not to be out of 
doors after nine at night. They were ordered 
to bring in an accounting of all horse forage, all 
food-stuffs and all accommodation they had in 
their premises for men and animals. They 
were ordered to bring in all rolling stock for in- 
spection. They were ordered to leave their 
lights burning behind lowered shades. 

Under Foreign Rule 

Their officials were ordered to report daily 
to the army for instructions. Their judges 
were ordered to make reports of their cases. 
There was no duty of the day to which a citizen 
could turn without feeling the invader 's hand 
upon him. There was no road on which he 
could move without being challenged by a 
sentry. There was no woman who dared ven- 
ture on the street, for fear of offense which her 
men could not dare to resent, or for the worse 



192 THE INVASION OF AMEKICA 

fear of the fate that would be theirs if they did. 

So, like a great fan opening out from Provi- 
dence the armies expanded over the conquered 
country, and each spoke expanded again. The 
divisions unfolded their brigades, the brigades 
their regiments, the regiments their battalions, 
the battalions their companies, and the com- 
panies their detachments, reaching everywhere 
and everywhere keeping in touch with the main 
body through the marvelous network of intelli- 
gence that grew into being behind the soldiers. 3 

It was as if a vast octopus had crawled from 
the sea at Narragansett Bay. With its body 
clinging there, fast to its ocean base, it sent its 
tentacles into every crevice of the land, and 
gripped tight. 

"It is plain now what he is doing," said the 
Chief of Staff to the President in Washington. 
"He is keeping a powerful retaining force in 
Khode Island, absolutely assuring his base and 
holding the gate open for reinforcements. 
Westward he is throwing masses of cavalry — 
probably most of the cavalry that he has — to 
clear the way for his infantry and artillery to 

s The elementary tactics for the procedure of every army 
that has to hold any extended territory. 



THE BISING OF NEW ENGLAND 193 

march along the coast to New York. North- 
ward those cavalry masses are screening him 
against any attempt by our army either to fall 
on his forces in Connecticut, or to move around 
north of him and attack the rear of his divisions 
that are marching on Boston. It isn't tactics. 
It's simple, commonsense use of numerical su- 
periority. ' ' 4 

Making a Fight for Boston 

The President played with a pile of dis- 
patches. They were from Boston and New 
York. " You say that those companies of coast 
artillery from the south got through?" 

"I had a message from the Commander of the 
Artillery District of Boston," he said. "The 
six companies arrived at Fort Banks yesterday 
morning. They had to go around by way of 
Lake Champlain and Vermont, but they got 
through. That will at least give the men some 
relief if there should be a sustained action." 5 

4 Worked out from a consensus of opinions and plans by 
tactical experts both here and abroad. 

5 " When the defenses outside the Continental United States 
are provided for, there will remain for home gun defenses 
176 officers and 7,543 enlisted men, which is about one-third 
of one relief."— Page 15, Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, 
U. S. A., for year ended June 30, 1914. 



194 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

" You are sure it was not a mistake to — sacri- 
fice them?" asked the President. 

The General shrugged his shoulders. 
" There are some things that one simply must 
do," he said. "We had to give New York and 
Boston something. We absolutely must make 
some sort of a fight for them." 

The Commander of the harbor defenses of 
Boston was not concerning himself about the 
occult reasons that had inspired the reenforce- 
ments. He had been praying for men, for he 
needed half a dozen men wherever he had one. 
He needed them for the searchlights, he needed 
men that he might establish defenses to the 
land approaches, he needed men for protection 
of base lines and cable stations. There were 
scout boats to be manned, and outlying islands 
to be posted with lookouts to guard against ap- 
proach of ships in fog or darkness. 

Now that he had them, he waited for no or- 
ders and asked for no instructions. He loaded 
quartermasters' boats with detachments and 
rushed them to the waterfront of Boston and 
Chelsea where he knew of things he wanted. 
They returned with two tons of explosives and 
miscellaneous ordnance material that had been 



THE EISING OF NEW ENGLAND 195 

seized from merchants. He seized barb wire. 
From electric light plants and power works he 
obtained, by the same simple method, some 
forty miles of lead-covered cable for his mine- 
fields, and from ships in the harbor he took half 
a dozen searchlights. 6 

To Hold the Defenses 

Before night, too, he had men entrenched be- 
hind entanglements with machine guns on the 
narrow neck of land that leads to Nahant's 
broad cliff promontory on the north of Boston 
Harbor, to protect position finding stations 
there and a great 60-inch searchlight. 

Southward at Point Allerton, on the long cape 
that juts toward Boston Harbor from Nan- 
tasket Beach, to defend the stations and search- 
lights and approaches of Fort Bevere with its 
mighty batteries, he placed a strong force with 
ample artillery. 7 

6 " The searchlight project is approximately 50 per cent, 
completed. . . . The fire-control system may be said to be 
approximately 60 per cent, completed. . . . Installation of 
power generating and distributing equipment is 25 per cent, 
completed. . . . Submarine mine structures are 83 per cent, 
completed." — Report, Chief of Coast Artillery, U. S. A., for 
year ended June 30, 1914. 

i Regular manning detail for Boston defenses, twelve com- 



196 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

This was the point where he feared a landing 
most. He built an armored train, seizing the 
material from the town of Hull, and armed it 
with quick-firers that it might be sent to threat- 
ened places. 

Outposts were sent as far as Nantasket, for 
fear the enemy should try to land there or cross 
the narrow neck and take boats over it into the 
bay behind. 

Beyond Fort Revere he destroyed certain 
houses that would interfere with the firing. At 
the far outlying islands called The Graves he 
posted men with signal rockets. He sent scout 
boats to lie at sea beyond the fire zone, from 
Nahant to the spot where the Light-ship was 
moored in times of peace. 8 

panies of Coast Artillery. These have seven systems of de- 
fense to maintain. The companies are not enlisted to their 
full strength. Even if they were, there would be less than 
two hundred men to each defense. This is not sufficient for 
any sustained action at the big guns alone. A sufficiently 
energetic enemy, even if he might not damage the works, 
could wear out the men by incessant attack for a few days 
and nights. There certainly would not be men enough to 
provide for outlying defense against landing parties. 

s These are all vitally necessary parts of the defense of the 
Boston harbor forts. They are only a small part of what 
would have to be done in case of naval attack. The data 
used here are not theoretical. They have been developed by 
actual test. 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 197 

Within forty hours he had doubled the 
strength of his defense because he had the men. 
He looked up at a hostile aeroplane, flying well 
beyond gunshot. They had become almost com- 
monplace objects in Boston's sky during the 
past days. "Well, come on!" he said. "You 
and your ships! We'll give you a whirl." 

He was awakened at one o'clock that morn- 
ing. The "whirl" had begun. Ships were 
standing in toward Nahant Bay in the north 
and off Cohasset in the south. Fifteen minutes 
afterward the people of Boston and Charlestown 
and Brookline, of Quincy and Weymouth, Hing- 
ham and Lynn, were brought out of their beds 
by explosions that shook the houses. They 
came from the sea, northeast and southeast and 
east. They were not only incessant, but they 
came two and even three so close together at 
times that they made a sustained roar as if the 
very air itself had turned to thunder. 

Boston's Bombardment Begins 

Battleships with 15- and 16-inch guns were 
bombarding Fort Revere and the fort was an- 
swering with its 12-inch guns. Armored 
cruisers were firing on Standish. Armored 



198 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

cruisers and battle cruisers were throwing 12- 
and 14-inch shells into Deer Island and on Win- 
throp. Battleships lying north of Nahant in 
Nahant Bay, and thus invisible to the Boston 
defenses and not to be reached by searchlights, 
were bombarding Forts Banks and Heath. 9 

Fort Warren was firing at them, over Boston 
Light. Fort Andrews loosed its batteries. 

There was bombardment from 3-inch guns 
along the beaches, north and south, where de- 
stroyers were attacking the coast stations, un- 
der heavy fire in reply from the defenders on 
the land. 

Southeast, on the horizon, there sprang up a 
dull glow that became greatly red, and grew 
swiftly to pulsating flame. It was the town of 
Hull, burning. 

The people in South Boston, looking seaward, 
saw lights appear in the sky over the outer 
harbor islands. They slipped slowly down- 
ward, leaving long trails of stars behind, that 
hung, burning, in the air as if they had been 
fixed there. 

The falling lights opened, like monster 

9 So developed in sea and land maneuvers undertaken for 
the purpose of establishing the very points here mentioned. 



THE RISING OF NEW ENGLAND 199 

flowers, into glaring, spectrally white flame just 
before they reached the earth. All the harbor 
where they fell stood revealed as in a lightning 
flash ; but this flame did not go out like a light- 
ning flash. It burned, steady, inextinguishable, 
for long minutes. 

They were star-bombs that were being 
dropped on the forts by the great war-fowl, the 
iron breasted aeroplanes. The white lights 
glaring below, and the hanging lights in the 
air that stood like a lighted staff, pointed out 
the forts to the hooded cannon of their iron sis- 
ters out at sea. 

Fired at from sea and sky, the forts replied 
and shook the earth. Faster and faster hur- 
ried the fire from the hidden ocean. Five ships 
were firing their secondary batteries to destroy 
an out-lying searchlight at a range of 6,000 
yards. It was said afterward that at least five 
hundred projectiles were expended at that one 
mark alone. 10 

10 It is estimated, from careful calculations, that to put out 
of action a searchlight at night with shipfire at a range of 
6,000 yards, more than a thousand shots from 3-inch guns 
should be required. The fact is mentioned here to illustrate 
the great strength of harbor defenses against fire from the sea, 
if there be enough mobile troops on the land to prohibit de- 
struction by landing parties. 



200 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

In a great semicircle around Boston Harbor, 
from Nahant out to sea and curving in again 
toward Cohasset on the south, lay the flaming, 
roaring line, firing at the defenses all night 
long, till the dawn began to whiten. 

And behind Boston, inland, the other great 
armed semicircle was contracting steadily, 
swiftly. 



VII 
THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 

Boston Harbor should have been impregnable 
to attack from the sea. Had Nature been a 
modern army engineer, she could not have con- 
structed an oceanic gate more perfectly designed 
for modern defense against modern ships. 

One might picture Boston as being protected 
by two great claws that curve seaward and wait 
there on guard, pointing toward each other. 
The northern claw would be Winthrop peninsula 
with its beach and summer cottages. The south- 
ern one would be the long, narrow arm of land 
that has famous Nantasket Beach on it, and ends 
northward at Point Allerton. 

Between these two claws, a prodigal hand has 

scattered islands. From Deer Island, lying in 

the north close under Winthrop, to George's 

Island in the south, they form a stone wall with 

gaps that are the channels. Far out, grouped 

around the portal, the sea is sown with ledges 

and rocks whose kelp beards stream in an ever- 

201 



202 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

heaving sea. Here are the Brewsters, the 
Devil's Back, the Graves, the Roaring Bulls. 

Within, there is a glorious harbor great 
enough for a world's armada. But the entrance 
is a Pass of Thermopylae. 

Commanding that pass and all approaches far 
out to sea with zones of fire whose intersecting 
circles marked rings of sure destruction, were 
defenses honestly built. They were ready to 
receive and withstand that climax of destructive- 
ness which man's science has embodied in the 
conical steel projectile fired from the rifled gun. 1 

The navy that invested the harbor entertained 
no illusions on that score. It had not dared the 
attempt to force the passages of Narragansett. 
It would not dare to force the passages of Bos- 
ton. As at Narragansett, its business was to 
occupy the defenders and wear them out while 
the army fell on them and on Boston from the 
land. 2 

i That the American harbor defense system and construc- 
tion are of the very highest type, has been acknowledged many 
times by the technical experts of the world. More than once 
the author has heard foreign officers express the belief that 
they were practically impregnable to naval fire, providing 
they were fully supplied and equipped with the material neces- 
sary for continuous defense. 

2 A generous system of reliefs is imperative in harbor de- 



MAP ILLUSTRATING THE ENEMY AT- 
TACK ON BOSTON AND NEIGHBOR- 
ING: CITIES 



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COHASSET 



203 



204 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

The Deadly Blind Man's Buff 

The ships entered a shrouded, black sea where 
there was not a light to warn of reef or shoal. 
Lightless themselves, they groped with deep-sea 
leads and sounding machines till they assured 
themselves of safe positions where they might 
have sea-room to swing around in great closed 
circles at high speed. 

These circles would cut deeply into the circles 
of the fire zones of the defenses. At close range 
the vessels, invisible to the forts, could send a 
furious volley into them, and rush past before 
the guns could find them, to return on their circle 
and fire from some other point. It was the 
penalty that darkness lays on land defenses. 
But it penalized the ships, also. 3 

fenses during war. Peace time maneuvers have developed the 
fact that the mere strain of incessant watchfulness while wait- 
ing for an enemy who may appear at unexpected points sud- 
denly, is so great that unless the men have frequent relief, 
they cannot exert that concentrated energy which is needed 
instantly in the crisis. 

3 This system of night attack has been developed and tested 
by actual trial, and is such as is now laid down for battle 
practice in the tactics of most navies. "The . . . squadron 
will enter . . ., and will maneuver at range of about 9,000 
yards from Fort . . ., firing heavily, to induce the defense to 
expend as much ammunition as possible." — Extract from 
actual orders in author's possession, given to a squadron of 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 205 

They would have to fire without sighting their 
mark. They dared not betray themselves to 
the waiting guns on land by throwing their 
search-lights on the defenses, while the defenses 
could sweep the sea incessantly, for their search- 
lights were disposed along miles of coast, far 
aloof from the batteries. 

If the search-lights were effective, the ships 
should have to flee to the farthest limit of the 
coast guns' range. At that distance they, in 
turn, could not deliver an effective bombardment 
of the land so long as it was dark. So, then, all 
the ferocious game of war centered for the time 
on the search-lights. The death-laden ships, the 
death-laden guns on land, had to wait till it was 
learned what the lights would do. 4 

The enemy knew that the American defenses 

battleships and cruisers for night attack. It will be noted 
that this distance is less than one-half the range of the 12-inch 
rifled mortars in a harbor defense battery. 

* The search-light system, recognized as a vital part of 
harbor defense by the Endicott Board on harbor defense (ap- 
pointed in 1885) has grown steadily in importance with the 
steady increase in ship armament and ship speed. A thor- 
oughly efficient installation of search-lights for modern har- 
bors demands as much scientific calculation and interlocation 
as do the gun-systems. If the search-lights cannot infallibly 
find any vessel that may approach within range, the guns of 
the fortification are useless. 



206 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

had only about one-half the search-light installa- 
tion that was needed. The hostile sailors had 
not been forced to depend on spies for this in- 
formation. It was in American reports that 
had been made to Congress session after ses- 
sion. 5 

They had prepared for their game of blind 
man's buff by long consultations over charts. 
Every ship's officer was provided with minute 
instructions for every contingency that human 
wit could forecast in the headlong game of chess 
that is played with cannon. 

Defenders Stand Prepared 

The defenders were ready, too. In the human 
chain that began with the battle commander, and 
reached from him through links of district com- 
manders to fire commanders and battery com- 
manders, each man had his orders for any one 

s The inadequacy of the installation has been made the sub- 
ject of continuous reports. It is a fact that a few years ago, 
when a mock attack on one of the most important Atlantic 
defenses was ordered by the War Department, the commander 
had to requisition search-lights from other coast defenses, and 
that during the maneuvers the search-light defense, because 
of its inadequacy and temporary character, failed at several 
critical points, permitting attacking ships to come within less 
than 4,000 yards of one important battery. 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 207 

of a hundred things that might occur, however 
quickly it might come. 

They knew what batteries to fire and when, at 
the extreme fire zone, at the intermediate zone, 
and at the third fire zone which commanded the 
mine fields. They had before them, worked out 
to the ultimate detail, the order of fire if the 
enemy ships should come in column, in double 
column, or in scattered formation. Far down 
the beaches, north and south, they had every 
range plotted, that the great guns might be 
turned on landing parties if the secondary shore 
defenses should fail to hold them. 6 

The ships struck simultaneously all along the 
line of defenses. They fired close in north and 
south, and from battleships out at sea. A 
plunging fire went over Nahant and across into 
Winthrop. The speeding ships missed the de- 
fenses and their bursting shells wrecked the 
town instead. As its flames reddened the sky, 

e Usually the firing zones are: first, 6,000 yards to the 
extreme range of biggest guns; second or intermediate, 3,000 
yards to 6,000 yards; third (mine field zone), 3,000 yards. 
The order of fire is worked out absolutely for every condition 
that is possible. The movements of attacking ships, and their 
combinations, although very numerous, can be predicated with 
some accuracy beforehand. 



208 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

the flames of Hull, at Point Allerton on the end 
of the southern peninsula, made a red reply. 

The quick search-lights caught the ships. 
Again and again the white light- shafts fell on 
veering, speeding vessels and made them hurry 
to get away before the fire-control of the de- 
fenses could cover them. 

Still they returned. Each time they ap- 
proached at a new point in the hope of develop- 
ing a defect in the light-system. Each time they 
fired all the metal that they could throw in the 
one instant before the beams fell on them. 

There were few hits made by these running 
ships; but they could afford to waste ammuni- 
tion, since their continual attack forced the de- 
fenders to use their own insufficient supply. 

A Game of Wits 

While half -naked men in ships' turrets and 
half -naked men at coast guns and in mortar pits 
were toiling to wreak brute destruction, a game 
of wits was being played just as busily. This 
game was played, not on the huge armored ships, 
not in the formidable engine-batteries of the 
forts, but in places miles away from either. 



THE INVESTMENT OP BOSTON 209 

They were insignificant little places from the 
point of view of war — summer settlements on 
friendly beaches, harmless little coves, pleasant 
shores beset with the fantastic hotels and fan- 
tastic towers of American pleasure-places. In 
the summer days of peace, probably not one in 
any thousand of the happy crowds that played 
and laughed there ever imagined that these 
serene, careless places could have any import- 
ance some day in battle. 

That night they were playing a part that was 
full of danger to the venturesome ships. The 
American engineers had established portable 
search-lights there, and made base stations and 
range-finding points of them. Every one of 
these insignificant out-lying points was endow- 
ing the guns in the distant defenses with an 
added deadline ss of accuracy. 

The modern rifled gun is fired not by sight but 
by mathematics. The position of its target is 
found not by guess but by triangulation. Far 
away, on either side of land batteries are ob- 
servers. The straight line from one to the 
other is the base line. As soon as they sight a 
ship, each turns his instruments on it and gets 



210 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

the angle from his end of the base line. The 
ship to be fired at is at the apex of the triangle 
thus obtained. 

The men at the guns get this position by tele- 
phone instantly. They know to a foot what 
their weapons' elevation must be with a given 
charge of powder and a given weight of projec- 
tile to reach that distant spot. They set their 
mammoth piece, elevate it above the parapet on 
its lift, fire it and bring it back into concealment 
again. 

To bombard these base-stations from the sea 
was nearly futile. The shells that could sweep 
a fore-shore and make it untenable for an army 
might never find these few scattered, concealed 
men or these scattered, hidden, tiny stations. A 
whole fleet might rave at them for hours, and in 
vain. There was only one sure, quick way to 
cripple them. 7 

7 Estimated number of shots required at night from ships 
afloat at 6,000 yards: to destroy position-finding tower which 
is visible, 22 12-inch shells, 250 4-inch shells or 2,500 3-inch 
shells; to destroy invisible station without tower, 400 12-inch 
shells, 5,000 4-inch shells; to destroy search-light, 24 12-inch 
shells, 300 4-inch shells or 3,000 3-inch shells. This fact makes 
it feasible to protect outlying and secondary range stations per- 
fectly if sufficient troops can guard each station to fight off 
landing parties. An enemy will surely land men to destroy 
them unless he knows they are well defended. 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 211 

The Secret Attack on the Shore 

Far northward, miles outside of Boston Har- 
bor, beyond the system of the harbor defenses, 
two ships stood into Nahant Bay, until they were 
within a line drawn from Fishing Point south 
of Swampscott to Spouting Horn on Nahant. 
Here, in 7 fathoms of water, they stopped and 
lowered their boats. 

Manned by crack bluejackets, whose oars were 
wrapped with cloth that they should not make a 
sound in the rowlocks, the cutters moved toward 
the beach at Little Nahant. 

Far away the harbor searchlights played like 
summer lightning. The sailors moved on in 
utter darkness, toward the invisible beach. 
They rowed in, in irregular formation, till they 
could hear the surf. Then the foremost boats 
lay still, tossing on the swell, waiting for the 
others to draw abreast. Formless, vaguely 
gray in the night, the line made a dash. 

They were on the first lifting swell of the long 
waves that tumble toward the land when a fierce 
white light tore terribly through the night, and 
blazed on them, and around them. It held them, 
intangibly, tightly, like the hand of a ghost. 



212 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Orange flashes ripped through it. Little Na- 
hant Beach quaked with explosion. In the white 
light, as if the tossing boats were spectral pic- 
tures in a dissolving view, they melted amid the 
roar of the shore-guns. Black fragments 
whirled through the steady glare, and shells 
chopped the sea where there were bobbing heads 
and clutching hands. 

The light stabbed the night, in and out. It 
veered to sea with enormous speed. A long, 
black silhouette with three funnels appeared full 
in the circle of its artificial day. A funnel 
vanished, and another. A spout of water lifted 
alongside from a shell that had fallen short. 
Another, the next instant, smashed into its side 
and made it reel. The destroyer turned sud- 
denly and rushed at the land. Its steering gear 
had been shot away. Almost instantly it 
straightened out again; but Little Nahant was 
raving. Little Nahant was flaming without 
pause. The searchlight held the ship. It stag- 
gered, like a stumbling animal, pitched twice, 
each time a little more wildly, and went down 
bow first. 

"Have repulsed attack on search-light sta- 
tion and observers at this point," went the word 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 213 

from Bailey's Hill on Nahant to the battle com- 
mander in Fort Warren. "No losses. De- 
stroyer and five ships' boats with crews com- 
pletely eliminated." 

Attacks Made Everywhere 

They did not have time to cheer at Fort War- 
ren. On Nantasket Beach, as far sonth as 
Nahant was north, a landing was being at- 
tempted in greater force and with the deter- 
mined assistance of a destroyer division that was 
lying close to the beach. 

Here there were three hundred men of Massa- 
chusetts Volunteer Militia, Coast Artillery, be- 
hind barb-wire and sand-bag defenses with two 
pieces of field artillery and three machine guns. 
They were being swept by savage fire from the 
destroyers. 

' ' We can hold the ships ' boats off. Surf high, 
and landing will be slow," they reported to the 
battle commander by field telegraph. "But we 
must have relief from naval fire, or cannot con- 
centrate efforts on landing parties. ' ' 

Their officers sent the exact distance from the 
beach of the destroyers. In the forts the fire 
commanders studied their charts, plotted with 



214 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

diagrams of the shore in sections. They cal- 
culated the range. A dropping shot from a 
6-inch gun fell among the enemy vessels one 
minute later. The next went over. The third 
struck a destroyer. Before it disappeared, 
shells were falling among the division too fast 
to count. Three guns were firing. They were 
throwing 12 shells in one minute. 8 

Two destroyers were towed away, crippled. 
Another escaped from the fire zone but sank at 
sea. 

Undeterred, the boat parties tried to run the 
surf and rush the defenders. But the sea was 
heavy, breaking with a sharp over-fall. Un- 
protected by fire from the sea, unable to work 
their own machine guns in the rough water, the 
sailors were pounded in the breakers. The field 
artillery blew their boats apart. The machine 
guns slashed them. Eifle fire hammered them. 

" Attack beaten off," reported the militiamen. 
In the surf there were a few drifting pieces of 
wood, tossing oars and bodies pitching to and 
fro as the undertow played with them. 

s Actual records of American harbor batteries : three 6-inch 
guns on disappearing carriages, 15 shots in 1 minute, 27 
seconds. 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 215 

The "Hussars of the Sea" 

' ' Destroyer division off this point. ' ' It was a 
report from Strawberry Hill, south from Fort 
Bevere. Point AUerton's search-light swung 
down the beach, the search-light from Straw- 
berry Hill centered on them. The reckless craft, 
the hussars of the sea, dashed in to a 400 yard 
range, and, steaming parallel with the beach at 
full speed, sent in a heavy broadside fire from 
all their guns. More than three hundred shells 
were directed against the Strawberry Hill light 
in those few minutes. They swung, and fled to 
the sea as the batteries of the fort opened on 
them. 9 

"Searchlight intact," reported Strawberry 
Hill. 

"Men have landed on Marblehead Neck, ac- 
cording to reports from Swampscott, ,, reported 
Fort Heath. "Three hundred men at least tak- 
ing road southward.' ' 

"Push forward and occupy Lynn Beach at 
narrowest part," telegraphed the battle com- 

9 From an actual maneuver performed successfully by a 
destroyer division attempting to destroy a base station during 
a mock battle on the Atlantic coast. 



216 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

mander to the force at Nahant. "Will send one 
hundred reenf orcements by boat to Lynn. ' ' 

At Nantasket a second attempt at a landing 
was made. It was defeated, and the boats with- 
drew. Two suspicious vessels were sighted al- 
most within Hull Bay and were destroyed by 
fire from a shore battery. A landing party 
struck at Strawberry Hill. Another, probably 
the same that had attempted the second landing 
at Nantasket, tried to haul three boats over into 
the Weir Eiver. 10 

All were repulsed. There was hot fighting 
going on near Lynn. It was difficult for the bat- 
tle commander to judge what its result would be. 
Once his forces sent to Fort Heath for more men. 
Later, they telegraphed that they were holding 
their ground. 

The enemy struck again, and again. He made 
an attempt on Winthrop, and lost two destroyers 
in the mine fields. The fleet opened heavy fire 
at short intervals, to mask the attack of the land- 
ing parties. But the telegraph and telephone 
system of the forts sent word everywhere, to all 
the outlying posts, of the uniform success of the 

10 The Weir River would enable assailants to reach the 
inner harbor and take the defenses in the rear. 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 217 

defense, with the result of making their fight con- 
stantly more effective. 

The Defenses Hold Out 

The defenses were holding out. When word 
came at last that the raiders who had landed at 
Marblehead Neck were retreating to their boats, 
the end of the night 's fighting had arrived. The 
fleet called off its boats, and took them aboard. 

It was near dawn. Once more, for the last 
time, the ships ran in, passing the batteries at 
full speed, and fired from every gun that would 
bear in the instant of their passing. Every huge 
turret gun, every broadside battery, opened up 
at once. 

For many miles inland the air trembled and 
hummed. The hills growled with rolling echoes. 
Windows in distant places blew inward and 
walls trembled. But the defenses held. 

Ship after ship swung in that fierce circle and 
passed. It was the climax of the night's bom- 
bardment. When the dawn spread far on the 
ocean horizon, the defenders saw the enemy fleet 
lying back against it, far out of the zone of fire. 

The sea was bare between them and the forts, 
except for a rent ruin hanging on the Outer 



218 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Brewster where a shattered destroyer was 
aground. Off Cohasset lay another, sprawling 
on the rocks called The Grampuses, half out of 
the sea as if it were the torn body of a weird 
monster that had thrown itself ashore in a dying 
agony. 

"No damage," said Fort Revere. "No dam- 
age, except dismounted searchlight, ' ' said Fort 
Strong. "One 6-inch gun dismantled,' ' said 
Standish. "No damage," reported Andrews 
and Banks. In Fort Warren two 3-inch quick 
firers were destroyed. 

"We could hold them off forever," said the 
battle commander, "if we were protected from 
the land." 

It Was His Last Fight 

The successful fight of his defenses had made 
it only the more bitter for him. He knew that 
this was the last fight. He knew that the army 
that was sweeping northward would take him in 
the back before night. 

He looked at one of his 12-inch rifles. He 
walked over to it and patted the beautiful thing, 
so shapely, so graceful that it seemed impossible 
that it should weigh 35 tons. "If they had just 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 219 

given you that little extra elevation !" he mur- 
mured. "Then yonder ships wouldn't dare lie 
within 20,000 yards of us." X1 

But "they" had not given the rifles that little 
extra elevation. "Thev" had found time 
enough and money enough to pay for bridges 
over muddy creeks, for printing millions of 
words of oratory, for hundreds of private bills. 
"They" had been able to find money to pay 
themselves for constructive recesses of Con- 
gress, and mileage for journeys that they had 
not made. But they had not been able to find 
money for defense. 

Just a little foresight, and Boston, that now 
was trembling, might be sitting behind that 
charmed circle of its great guns and laughing 
at all the navies of the world. 

Haggard and pale, Boston's people looked 
toward the sea and the dawn. The sullen thun- 
ders still rolled out there, but slowly now, and 
far off. The fleet was using only its heaviest 

n Mr. Garrison, Secretary of War, again represented to 
Congress at its last session that changes in the 12-inch gun 
carriages are absolutely necessary to give them an elevation 
of 15 degrees. This matter has been so well established that 
all military engineers are unanimous both as to the urgent 
need for the change and the excellent result that will follow. 



220 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

guns, and firing deliberately, though steadily. 
Having failed to destroy the effectiveness of the 
defenses, it would content itself with long range 
fire, simply to wear the defenders out till the 
army should arrive. 

All night long Boston people, moved to unen- 
durable terror by the bombardment, had tried 
to flee from the city. All night long other 
crowds had tried to enter it. On all the roads 
these opposing crowds had met and jostled. 

Opposing Streams of Fugitives 

They warned each other, and tried to turn 
each other back. Shells were falling into Bos- 
ton town, said the people who were fleeing from 
the city. Crazed by fear, they invented the most 
monstrous tales and believed them. 

The in-coming refugees, too, invented tales. 
They told of soldiers who had appeared in 
nearby towns, and who were burning and killing. 
Nothing so well illustrated the effect of terror 
on the faculty of reason as the fact that always, 
after this wild interchange of news, the city 
people continued to press toward the country, 
fearing soldiers less than the cannon-shots that 
had rung in their ears all night : and the country 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 221 

people rushed into the city, so panic-driven by 
what they had heard of the soldiers and their 
bloody day of vengeance, that they cared nothing 
for the heavy thunder that was shaking all the 
air. 

Though the roads out of Boston were thus 
crowded, the fugitives were only a small pro- 
portion of the population. Never before had 
humanity realized how firmly men are chained 
to their habitat. Here was a city, terribly beset 
by land and sea with unknown, terrible fate 
closing steadily around it. Beyond lay the 
United States where there was complete freedom 
still, and safety. Yet who could seek it? 

There were none who could go, except those 
temporarily mad with fear, or those so abjectly 
poor that it mattered nothing to them where 
they trudged. The workers could not go. They 
had to cling to the places that they knew, to the 
scanty foot-hold that was all the more precious 
to them for its scantiness. The rich could not 
go. Money had stopped. All that they owned 
had become suddenly valueless for producing 
cash ; and without cash they could not flee. The 
merely well-to-do, whose whole life depended on 
the town, whose whole possessions lay in real 



222 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

estate, in homes, in shops — where could they 
turn? 

Boston in Hopeless Fear 

They stayed. They even tried, dully, to at- 
tend to business, though there was no business. 
Mail was still coming in and going out, but in a 
vastly circuitous way, as it had to go around by 
way of Burlington, and so through Vermont and 
New Hampshire to its destination. Boston 
could communicate still by telegraph and tele- 
phone with the United States outside of southern 
and western New England ; but this, too, was in 
an equally circuitous way, and even such service 
as existed was constantly in danger of being 
severed. 

Motor traffic had almost ceased on the streets. 
The trolley and train services were cut down to 
the merest necessity. Gasoline and coal short- 
age already had begun to make itself felt. 
Prices had gone up for flour and for meat. The 
fish wharves held none except empty vessels. 

There was an unreasoning fear of the water- 
front streets. People shrank from them, and 
used the side streets, as if the tiny difference of 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 223 

a block or two could save them, should shells be- 
gin to fall. 

There was a fear, less unreasoning, of tall 
buildings. Most of the upper stories in high 
office buildings were deserted, except for daring 
ones who went in temporarily to look toward the 
harbor. 

A renewed fear of aeroplanes also had seized 
the city. For days they had passed and re- 
passed, till the people had become almost accus- 
tomed to them, since they threw no bombs nor 
made other demonstrations. Now, with the 
steady cannonading, the old fear returned. 
There were wild flights when the whirring roar 
was heard. More than once, men and women 
were trampled in those sudden dumb panics. 
Hypnotized by the impending of a greater trag- 
edy, the citizens scarcely noted these episodes 
that, in any other time, would have shocked the 
town. 

A rumor went through the streets that the fleet 
had been driven off. Survivors from Winthrop 
appeared in the city. They clutched at strang- 
ers and told with quivering mouths how the 
shells had crashed into their town, and how they 



224 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

and theirs in night clothes had fled between 
falling walls through a night ruddy with 
fire. 

Refugees from Breed's Island told how the 
ground was all ploughed by shells falling wild. 
They told of the water tower, flung far down the 
hill. 

Cities Destroyed and Taken 

Hull was destroyed utterly. There was noth- 
ing left of it. All gay Nantasket had vanished. 
Between it and Point Allerton the houses along 
shore were thrown on each other and torn apart 
or burned. 

On the last train to come in from the direction 
of Brockton were some who had fled from that 
city. It had been taken by the advancing army 
in the small hours of the morning. The town 
authorities, ordered out of bed by soldiers, had 
been escorted to the enemy commander, who had 
made them write announcements. Before sun- 
rise all the streets flaunted placards ordering 
the inhabitants to continue their business. 
Other placards warned them to deliver up all 
arms of any description. 

Twenty of the most prominent men, said 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 225 

the fugitives, had been seized as hostages. 

Every little while now Boston's communica- 
tion with some point was being cut. These 
severed lines told of the advance of the hostile 
army as eloquently as messages might. 

Up and down Washington street moved the 
multitude, waiting for news. The Old South 
Meeting House that has looked down on so many 
dramatic Boston spectacles never had looked on 
one so tragic as this — on a proud and not timor- 
ous city that was waiting impotently to be taken 
and dealt with. 

Had the enemy come quickly, had the army 
advanced into Boston with a swift rush, it would 
have been less agonizing for the waiting city 
than this slow, systematic, machine-like advance 
like the jaws of a great pincer that were closing 
down with cruel deliberation. 

The armed circle was contracting all the time, 
but it contracted slowly. Though the enemy's 
scouts had assured him long ago that the road 
was free, he was taking no chances in that hostile 
land, whose sting he had felt. Far as he might 
throw out his advance guards, he took care 
that they should remain in constant touch with 
the main force and with each other. He moved 



226 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

his divisions in fighting array. He kept an un- 
broken line of communications. 

Making Good His Possessions 

Wherever the army passed, it made good its 
possession wholly. It left no village behind it in 
its march whose means of existence, communica- 
tion, food supply and machinery of labor and 
business it had not made entirely its own. 

Where there were destroyed places, the in- 
vader organized the population to rebuild them. 
He levied on every community, large and small, 
for funds. He paid out nothing of his own, ex- 
cept written scrip. At one blow the whole finan- 
cial system of the conquered country was con- 
verted into one great source of tribute. 

Suddenly there came a storm of news to the 
Boston papers. It came from the country to 
the south of the harbor — from Cohasset and 
Hingham, Weymouth and Quincy. 12 

Heavy artillery was being unloaded all along 
the line of the south shore branch of the Old 
Colony Railroad. Horses and limbers were 

12 These are points lying south of the southern defenses of 
Boston Harbor, and so near them that modern siege guns 
planted there could fire into them at short range. 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 227 

moving along all the roads to the shore. Sol- 
diers were advancing into all the towns. 

Before the Hingham wires were cut, the cor- 
respondent in that town reported that enormous 
guns were being moved through it, on heavy 
motors. 

Quincy telegraphed that troops had hurried 
through there and seized the 100-foot Great Hill, 
and also the yacht club house on Hough's Neck. 
Then Quincy, too, was cut off. 

Scarcely half an hour later the fire from the 
forts broke out furiously. It was answered, 
with greater speed and fury, from the shore, 
where the foe had posted his great guns to en- 
filade the harbor defenses. 

At Fort Eevere the commandant cut away con- 
crete emplacements and succeeded in swinging 
one of his 12-inch guns around to fight the as- 
sailants, putting a heavy howitzer near Hingham 
out of action. 

A second plunging shot fell near a gun behind 
Baker Hill; but the assailants, from howitzer 
batteries concealed under Turkey and Scituate 
Hills, concentrated a desperate bombardment on 
him that drove the Americans from the works. 13 

"The primary harbor defense batteries (12-inch, 10-inch 



228 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Firing from heavy caliber weapons at short 
range, pouring explosives and common shell and 
shrapnel from every vantage point along all the 
shore, the hostile army swept the rear of the 
harbor defenses with such blasts that the mere 
impact of the solid shells made a din like the 
pounding of monstrous rivetters' hammers. 14 

From the sea all the big guns of the ships 
struck into the chorus. The vessels pressed in 
as closely as they dared and opened with every 
cannon that could get the range. 

Boston Completely Isolated 

Boston's populace, listening to the clamour 
from the sea, scarcely noted that the bulletins 
were announcing that all the railroad lines of 
the Boston and Maine Railroad leading north 
and northwest to Portsmouth, Haverhill, Law- 
rence and Lowell had been seized, and that Bos- 
ton was completely cut off. 

and 8-inch guns and 12-inch mortars) are not emplaced for 
anything except sea-ward fire, nor should they be. To use 
them against land attack would be only a matter of despera- 
tion, as in the case here described. As a matter of fact, 
they would be rather inefficient against smaller guns that are 
more mobile and durable. 

14, "Firing at speed, the shots from a dozen guns shooting at 
successive intervals, would not have five seconds between 
them." 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 229 

Silent policemen appeared all at once followed 
by men with posters and paste-pails. The 
crowds saw posters go up on their walls, signed 
by the Boston Citizens' Committee. 

There was a poster in great red letters warn- 
ing the inhabitants to deliver any firearms that 
they possessed in the City Hall within six 
hours. 

"Attention V 9 said another placard. "In 
case of military occupation of the city, a single 
disorderly act may mean the ruin of all. It is 
the duty of all citizens to offer no resistance, and 
to report to the authorities any plan toward re- 
sistance. ' 9 

There was a great stir in the crowd. A cab 
was pushing its way through Washington 
Street. Two dishevelled and blood-stained ar- 
tillerymen, and an equally dishevelled civilian 
were in it. 

While the soldiers went on to the City Hall, 
the civilian got out and entered a newspaper 
office. He was a reporter. 

The rumor sped from man to man in the crowd 
before the building and from street to street 
that news had arrived from the forts. There 
was a tremendous press into Washington Street, 



230 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

where men and women, crushed together, stared 
at the building. 

The cab hardly had stopped at the City Hall 
before a bulletin went up. 

FORT ANDREWS GARRISON 
DIES AT ITS POST 



IGNORES SUMMONS TO SURRENDER 



ONLY THREE MEN ESCAPE FROM RUINS 



Ten minutes later the * * extras ' ' appeared and 
were whirled through the town. They passed 
with the speed almost of the wind; for men 
passed them from hand to hand. They shouted 
the news to people looking from windows, in a 
delirium half of dismay, half of exultation. The 
newspaper man had brought in such a tale as 
would live in American history. 

The Newspaper Man's Story 

He had been writing his story during the 
night's bombardments while the mortar pits 
quaked around him with the eruptions of their 
steel volcanoes. He told how, in the morning, 
there had come suddenly from the shore the 
enfilading fire that caught the works in the back. 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 231 

The men at the mortars, unable to tnrn their 
ordnance against these assailants, continued to 
fire at the ships, obedient to the instructions 
from the range-stations, till the blasts from the 
bursting charges above and around them tore 
away all the systems of fire control. 15 

One enemy howitzer, trained at the very edge 
of a pit, threw shot on shot till a group of mor- 
tars was buried under the debris that was hurled 
down from the torn mounds. 

The mortars ceased action. The assailant, 
suspending his bombardment, demanded instant 
surrender, with the condition that the works 
must be delivered intact. The remnants of the 
garrison, black with smoke and grime, wounded 
and burned, replied by manning such movable 
artillery as was left. There was only one end 
to that. It was death. In twenty minutes there 
were four men left alive in the defenses — two 

is The tremendous air-compression in fortifications during 
gun-action almost always tears out parts of the general in- 
stallation even in mere target practice. If fire-control in- 
stallation, wiring, telephone systems, etc., are efficient only to 
the minimum degree, and there is no adequate reserve supply 
of material for repairs, they are certain to break down in any 
attack that is pressed with vigor. An attacked harbor-work 
is subjected to the most terrible destructive attempts that 
humanity has been able to devise. 



232 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

artillerymen, the newspaper man and a non- 
commissioned officer. 

They lay flat nnder a monnd. There was a 
small boat hidden below the far end of the island. 
"Get out of this if you can!" said the non- 
commissioned man, an electrician sergeant. 
"Hurry! I'll give you five minutes! Good- 
by!" 

He crawled back into the works. As they 
rowed away, they saw boats with invaders leav- 
ing the mainland for the island. Then there 
came a lick of flame out of the mortar battery 
that expanded instantly into a spraying foun- 
tain. An enormous detonation nearly blew 
their boat out of the water. The sergeant had 
found the firing key and touched off the hidden 
mine to demolish the defenses. 

In the excitement over this news that had 
broken the dull strain of waiting, the people of 
Boston scarcely noticed that all at once the firing 
at sea had stopped. 

Demanding Surrender 

Down the harbor a boat with a flag of truce 
was lying under Fort Warren. An officer, led 
blind-folded into the works, presented a sum- 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 233 

mons transmitted from the headquarters of the 
army. It called on the commander to surrender 
the entire system of defenses without further 
damage. It demanded also that a complete 
diagram of all the mine fields be delivered at 
once. 

"You have four hours,' ' continued this sum- 
mons. "At the end of that time, we shall bring 
our artillery to bear on the city from every quar- 
ter. Every five minutes thereafter we shall fire 
on a given section. You have made a brave and 
magnificent defense. By surrendering now, you 
will save your city from unnecessary destruc- 
tion which you are unable to prevent other- 
wise.' ' 

' ' I will reply in half an hour, ' ' said the com- 
mander. At the end of that time he sent this 
answer : 

"I shall surrender the defenses on condition 
that the city be left inviolate: that no troops 
occupy it: that the civil authorities be left in 
control : and that no levy be made on the munici- 
pality. ' ' 

"Absolutely refused," the hostile commander 
replied promptly. "Unconditional surrender, 
or bombardment begins at time stated. If any 



234 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

attempt is made to dismantle works, bombard- 
ment will begin at once. ' ' 

This was at noon. The hour-hand of the Old 
South Meeting House clock had not quite touched 
one, when artillery was passing through Wal- 
tham and Newton Centre, and along all the roads 
crossing the Charles and Neponset Rivers. 

There were cavalry and cycle and motor 
troops on these roads, and trains full of infantry. 
But always and everywhere was artillery. The 
sleek guns, pounding along New England's high- 
ways, spoke so wickedly of destructiveness, that 
they were more terrifying to the population than 
long columns of heavily armed men. 

At Jamaica Plain big howitzers were de- 
trained and taken to the ridge running west by 
north from the line of the New York and New 
England railroad. More guns were unloaded in 
Brookline and posted on the crests from whose 
tops, 200 feet high, they had all Brookline, all 
Boston to the bay, and Cambridge and Somer- 
ville under their long range fire. 16 

is Long range investment with modern artillery serves the 
double purpose of commanding the ultimate target, and com- 
manding all the territory in between, thus giving the artillerist 
possession of many miles of area. 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 235 

Infantry with field guns occupied Cambridge 
and Somerville, and laid their ordnance on all 
points that covered Boston from there. A regi- 
ment pushed quickly through Charlestown, took 
possession of the great grounds of the Navy 
Yard and stationed a battery of 3-inch field 
pieces under the Bunker Hill Monument. 

The Final Threat 

At quarter past three the hostile General sent 
a message to the American commander at Fort 
Warren apprising him of the disposition of the 
guns. "In one quarter of an hour," said he, 
' ' the bombardment will begin. We shall fire at 
Brookline first." 

The commander walked to the shattered flag- 
staff of the fort, on whose splintered top the 
American flag was waving in the wind from the 
Atlantic. He bared his head, and with his own 
hand hauled down the colors that he had de- 
fended so well. 

Five minutes later the colors on all the de- 
fenses dropped. 

Until then no soldiers had appeared in the city 
of Boston itself. The armed ring had contented 



236 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

itself with encircling all the suburbs. Now the 
telephone bell rang in the City Hall, and a voice 
asked for the Mayor. 

The voice was that of the hostile commander, 
speaking from Brookline. 

"Your defenses are in our hands,' ' he said. 
1 ' Our guns command every part of your city. I 
have the honor to demand unconditional and 
peaceable surrender at once, with all property 
of every kind. I regret to say that I can give 
you no time for discussion. I must request you 
to give me your answer now. ' ' 

The Mayor, with the instrument at his ear, 
looked around at the members of the Committee. 
" It is the army commander, ' ' he said. * ' He de- 
mands unconditional surrender. ' ' 

* ' There is only one answer to make, ' ' said one 
of the Committee. 

"We Surrender" 

The Mayor turned to the telephone. "We 
surrender, ' ' he said. 

"Very well," was the response. "A body of 
troops under a general officer will enter the city 
at once. They will have orders to punish any 
disturbance severely. I shall have the honor of 



THE INVESTMENT OF BOSTON 237 

calling on you shortly after my men have occu- 
pied the town. ' ' 

A little later the Citizens' Committee saw 
cavalry with machine guns approach the City 
Hall. Similar bodies were taking position in all 
the squares and parks, and posting their little 
guns where they could sweep the intersecting 
streets. Up and down Washington Avenue, and 
up and down all the side streets, were sentinels 
and guard parties. A wagon train was en- 
camped on the Common. 

And a little later still, preceded by light 
cavalry, three automobiles rolled through the 
streets to the City Hall. In each sat four men, 
dressed in campaign uniforms. They were lean- 
ing back, smoking, and looking with interest at 
the buildings. They seemed not to see the silent 
crowds that lined the sidewalks. 

These sedate, cheerful, interested gentlemen 
were the commander and his staff, arriving to 
take formal possession of the city. "With ma- 
chine guns and rifles threatening all around 
them, the silent people of Boston saw their con- 
querors enter the City Hall, and knew that their 
sovereignty had passed into alien hands. 



VIII 
DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 

1 * What is happening in Boston f ' ' The ques- 
tion stood before the United States and there 
was no answer. All communication with it had 
been annihilated as if by a lightning stroke. 

Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire still 
were able to reach the rest of the country with 
entire freedom, except that everything, mail, 
telegraph messages and freight, had to pass by 
way of the Lake Champlain Valley exclusively. 
But Boston, the richest half of Massachusetts, 
all of Rhode Island and the whole eastern end of 
Connecticut were as completely cut off as if all 
that great territory had been torn from the con- 
tinent and dropped into the sea. 

Of the 195 American cities with more than 
thirty thousand population, twenty-two were in 
the section that had been lost by the United 
States. The assessed valuation of those cities 
alone was more than two billions seven hundred 

238 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 239 

millions of dollars. Ten thousand manufactur- 
ing establishments were in the grip of the con- 
queror. 1 

The grip lay on the captured country like a 
thing of iron. Telegraph and telephone could 
be used only under the supervision of soldiers 
who controlled every central operating station 
and scrutinized everything, cutting out any ex- 
pression that did not suit them or refusing trans- 
mission altogether. Against these decisions 
there was no appeal. 

Post Offices Occupied 

The post offices were occupied by censors. 
Every piece of mail passed under their eyes and 
reached those to whom it was addressed only 
after long delay and generally with parts of it 
obliterated by heavy daubs of printing ink. 

All the springs of creative work were broken. 
Shops and manufactories were open, under 
orders from the military commanders, but the 
owners and managers did not know what to do. 
They continued to produce, dully and without 
plan. They dared not make even the most un- 

i Financial Statistics, Department of Commerce, Bureau of 
the Census, 1914. 



240 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

important contract, for no man could guess what 
might happen next. There was no money to be 
had, except for pressing needs. The banks 
throughout the conquered territory had been 
commanded to hold all cash in their vaults. 
Every man who applied for money had to prove 
to military officers that it was for immediate sub- 
sistence. 

In the banks and trust companies' offices 
everywhere there were posted placards reading 
as follows: 

"Our conquest, having been completed, carries with it 
absolute ownership of property conquered from the enemy 
State, including debts as well as personal or real prop- 
erty." 2 

The richest man in New England was on a 
level with the poorest. However much wealth 
he might have lying in the banks, he could draw 
only enough for daily food. He could not take 
anything from his safety deposit vaults. They 
were guarded by armed sentries who permitted 

2 In Brown versus the United States, the U. S. Supreme 
Court decreed that "war gives to the sovereign," i.e. the con- 
quering power, "full right to take the persons and confiscate 
the property of the enemy wherever found. — Humane mitiga- 
tions may affect exercise cf this right but cannot impair the 
right itself," 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 241 

access only to those who came accompanied by 
officers. 

This condition would last, as the invaders in- 
formed the people, until a complete list of all 
funds had been made. 

In every financial department of cities and 
towns were uniformed men demanding cash 
statements and lists of assessed valuations for 
the purpose of apportioning the amount of con- 
tribution to be levied on each community. 

While the enemy was going thus systematic- 
ally to work to ascertain the full money value 
of his prize, he made requisitions for immediate 
needs in every place occupied by him. The 
troops demanded hay, oats, corn and other for- 
age. They paid for the supplies with written 
papers that acknowledged receipt; but it was 
noticed that these receipts did not promise pay- 
ment. 3 

$50,000 a Day Levied 

In Boston the municipal authorities were in- 
formed that the city was subject to a cash levy 
for the support of troops at the rate of $1 daily 

s "The so-called exemption of private property from capture 
or seizure on land may be called almost nominal." — Rear- 
Admiral Stockton, Outlines of International Law. 



242 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

for each man of the occupying army, making an 
amount payable in bank funds of $50,000 a day. 4 

The authorities had no recourse except to find 
the money. Nominally in control, they were 
held rigorously to account for the obedience of 
their city. The Headquarters Staff of the in- 
vading army had possession of the State House, 
and from this point sent out brief orders. 

Prominent among the notices that were 
posted here and in all public places of Boston 
was the announcement of the institution of the 
new government. It was : 

"On and after this date the City of Boston is under the 
rule of the Headquarters Staff of this army. The present 
civil officials of the city will continue their functions. A 
continuance of existing civil and penal laws, and the exer- 
cise of legislative, executive and administrative duties are 
permitted under the sanction and with the participation of 
the military government." 5 

Had Boston town gone under in flame and 
terror, the very fury of the catastrophe might 

* Napoleon made Valencia pay $100,000 for the support of 
his army. Receipts were provided for originally when troops 
made requisitions, not necessarily to insure pay to the 
despoiled inhabitants, but merely to prevent unauthorized 
plundering. 

6 A universally accepted form of military rule, and distin- 
guished from merely martial law. 




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DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 243 

have carried men through it with less of despair 
than this cold conquest. Instead of blows to be 
struck, or blood to be shed, there was only hu- 
miliation — humiliation intensified hourly by the 
cool, unimpassioned correctness with which the 
enemy treated the fallen city. 

He did not even fill the city with troops. 
Only four thousand infantry and a regiment of 
cavalry were sent in to hold all Boston. The 
rest of the army remained outside, encamped or 
quartered on the people of the suburbs and the 
towns of the metropolitan district. 

Unconcerned Conquerors 

Unconcerned, almost unguarded, the com- 
mander and his officers moved about the town. 
They went in and out of the City Hall with the 
assurance of superiors. They occupied the two 
largest hotels. Brookline people reported that 
the Country Club there had been turned into a 
brigade headquarters. 

Dazed, as if in the bonds of an ugly nightmare 
that must vanish if they could only awaken, the 
people of Boston looked at this handful of men 
who had so easily, so calmly, made themselves 
utter masters of a metropolitan district of 39 



244 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

municipalities — 13 cities and 26 towns all within 
fifteen miles of the State House. From the 
State House this dozen or two dozen quiet, busi- 
ness-like men in uniform ruled with a word or 
two over 415 square miles with a population of 
more than a million and a half of people, and a 
taxable value of more than two and one-half 
billions of dollars. 6 

In the city so helplessly given over to them, 
there were, according to the certificate then 
lying in the City Clerk's office, 124,000 men lia- 
ble to enrollment in the State Militia. These 
were part of those " millions of men" of whom 
passionate orators had spoken so often — the 
millions of heroic, strong, intelligent American 
freemen who would instantly spring to arms at 
the call of need and sweep the most daring in- 
vader back into the sea. 7 

They were heroic. They were strong. They 
were intelligent. But they were confronted by 
the cold truth. It stared at them from all their 
squares, from all their parks, from the ap- 
proaches to all their bridges. It was the cold 

6U. S. Census Bureau Report, 1914; also Boston City- 
Manual. 

7 So certified to City Clerk, Boston, by Board of Assessors, 
June 30, 1914, exact number 123,657. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 245 

truth — in the shape of cannon. Even the 
grounds of Harvard and of Boston University 
were occupied by batteries. Sentinels were on 
watch in Boston's church towers with machine 
guns that pointed down into the streets. 

Against that machinery of war, courage was 
as futile as a dream. Strength was as helpless 
as an infant in a cyclone. Intelligence was 
naked against the unintelligent steel. 

Helpless as Any Village 

So this city, one of the richest of the world, 
next to New York in its imports, with its enor- 
mous railroad terminals that drew together the 
roads of a continent's commerce, had dropped 
into the invader's hand almost for the picking, 
and lay in his grasp as incapable of resistance 
as if, instead of being the fourth greatest city of 
the United States, it had been a seaside village. 8 

There had not been a shot fired after the last 
shot had sounded from the harbor forts and the 
American flag had vanished from the harbor 
sky. 

There was nothing to do. Slowly, systematic- 
ally as it had invested Boston, so the army had 

s Statistics of Cities of the United States, 1914, 



246 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

taken Boston. There was no commanding point 
in all the country around it that was not crowned 
with heavy artillery. There was no road to the 
city that was not held by troops who demanded 
passes. Patrols moved constantly through the 
streets. 

Through the whole metropolitan district had 
been sent a proclamation issued by the local au- 
thorities, warning the people that all intercourse 
between the territories occupied by belligerent 
armies whether by letter, by travel, or in any 
other way, had been interdicted and was punish- 
able by fine or imprisonment, or, in cases of se- 
rious infraction, by death after summary trial. 
This proclamation was countersigned by the 
military commanders of the various districts. 9 

Another proclamation, issued from headquar- 
ters in the State House, said : 

"The civil authorities, by and with the consent of the 
military government, proclaim that troops will be quar- 
tered on the inhabitants at the pleasure of regimental and 
company officers. The troops are required to respect the 
persons and property of citizens during the good behavior 

9 From "Instructions for Government of Armies of the 
United States in the Field" (with exception of statement as to 
specific punishment for infraction. Punishment mentioned 
here, however, is such as all military authorities will claim 
the right to inflict.) 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 247 

of the latter. Any treachery on the part of citizens is 
punishable by death. Refusal to comply with any provi- 
sion of this proclamation will be punished with fine or im- 
prisonment, or in aggravated cases by confiscation of any 
property whose use has been denied the troops." 10 

Clearing the Wharves 

Along the water-front an order was given to 
clear all the big wharves. Owners of vessels 
berthed there were instructed to have them 
towed to basins or anchored in the stream. 
Provided with diagrams of the mine-fields that 
had been surrendered under the conditions of 
capitulation, the mine-sweepers cleared the har- 
bor for the entrance of the fleet. 

Floating from more than a score of warships 
and transports, the Coalition's flags moved 
toward the city. Cannon saluted them from the 
forts, and they saluted in reply. Among the 
stricken thousands on shore there were many 
who sobbed as they heard the foreign thunders 
peal around their bay, and saw the foreign flags 
against their sky, with never a starry banner on 
all those ancient American waters. 

10 The right of quartering troops on the inhabitants of 
enemy country is unquestioned and universally exercised. 
Equally universal is the military commanders' right to punish 
treachery by death. 



248 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

There were foreign ships lying under the 
forts, unloading spare guns to replace those 
that were destroyed. All the works were busy 
with enemy sailors, repairing the defenses to 
protect conquered Boston against attack from 
its own navy. 

Naval and army transports steamed up to the 
city, and took possession of the wharves and the 
Navy Yard basins. Destroyers and small craft 
moved up the channel to the Mystic Eiver and 
occupied the naval and marine hospitals. Ma- 
rines and sailors came ashore in South Boston 
and established a signal station on Telegraph 
Hill. 

The naval commander seized all Federal 
property that had anything to do with the con- 
duct of the harbor. He assumed control of the 
quarantine and pilot service and declared the 
port open under his supervision. 11 

The News Shut Off 

All this, and all else of importance that was 
happening in their city, the people of Boston 
could learn only slowly and in fragments, as the 

11 "Complete conquest carries with it all rights of former 
government." — U. S. Supreme Court. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 249 

news spread from man to man by word of 
mouth. The newspapers were under armed 
guard, like all other important places that 
touched on public business. Censors sitting at 
editorial desks permitted only the printing of 
the most trivial routine news of local happen- 
ings that did not touch on the real concerns of 
the invaded country and city. 

The first pages of all the newspapers were re- 
served by the military government for its an- 
nouncements. These were headed: 

OFFICIAL! 



ORDERS AND DECISIONS BY THE MILITARY 

GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS AND 

THE CITY OF BOSTON 



There were so many of them that there was 
no room for news on the first pages, even had 
news been permitted. 

Within twenty-four hours the city had been 
set back to its condition in the seventeenth cen- 
tury when Boston's first newspaper was throt- 
tled by a reactionary legislature. 12 

is Benjamin Harris' "Publick Occurrences," suppressed after 
one issue. 



250 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

The people of Boston did not know if Con- 
necticut had been conquered. They did not 
know if New York had fallen. They did not 
know where their army was or what it was 
doing. A great battle might be deciding the 
fate of the entire country, but no whisper 
reached them. 

As in Colonial days, they were reduced to 
such knowledge as might come from rumor or 
from information whispered by those who 
learned something by chance. 

It was in this way that nearly everybody in 
Boston came to know that in the State House 
there sat a council, dressed in uniform and bear- 
ing military rank, but in reality a council of men 
learned in international and United States law. 
Surrounded by great rows of books which they 
had brought with them, these men were the real 
rulers of the conquered land. 13 

The Commanding General and his field staff 
might act with summary authority under the 
rules of war. The Commanding General's 
name might be signed to all the scores of orders 

13 There is an immense literature on military law, and every 
army contains officers who have taken degrees in law, for the 
purpose of expounding and administering it. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 251 

that issued daily. But this council of military 
lawyers acted as governors, judges and soldiers 
at once. Their decisions in all mooted cases, 
their ingeniously worded orders, were perfect- 
ing the enemy's complete possession. 14 

Stripping Boston of Its Treasure 

No American, great or humble, might go a 
step beyond the prescribed and routine affairs of 
the day without first learning what their orders 
were. No man held property, whether it were 
priceless or beggarly, except by their favor. 
No man knew at any moment what remaining 
liberties might not be taken from him at a word 
from them. 15 

With the impersonal coldness of a judicial 
machine they went about the work of stripping 
the city of treasure. In all the departments of 
the municipality were soldier experts, studying 
the books. In the Custom House were half a 
hundred others searching the records of exports 
and imports. Every financial institution of the 

14 The legal and technical correctness of all acts is of ex- 
treme importance in the peace settlements. 

15 All authority in conquered country is only by and with 
the authority of the military conqueror. His power, prac- 
tically, is limited only by his motives of policy or kindness. 



252 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

city had been ordered to present its accounts in 
the State House. 

During all this time the invader made daily 
requisitions for the use of the troops or for 
other military purposes. He demanded for the 
navy a supply of 10,000 pounds of smoking to- 
bacco, 1,000 pounds of roasted coffee, one ton of 
rice, 500 pounds of salt, and 50,000 pounds of 
fresh meat. He made requisition for paint, 
cable, ropes, hose, and steel for the ships. 16 

There were requisitions for medical supplies, 
for cloth and for shoes. To the harassed offi- 
cials, who remonstrated against the hardships 
that were laid on the city, and pointed to the 
state of its trade, the reply was that it was one 
of the richest cities in the world and that the 
levies were modest. When a deputation of citi- 
zens pressed the protest, the council printed its 
reply in the "official" columns of the news- 
papers. 

"In regard to the requisitions made by the 

i 6 This requisition is taken almost verbatim from a requisi- 
tion issued by a belligerent army in the field. It is an ac- 
cepted and acknowledged principle of war that the conqueror 
may force the enemy to pay his expenses to as large an extent 
as possible. A commander may waive the right, but it is held 
unimpaired. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 253 

occupying army," said this statement, " atten- 
tion is called to the fact that the United States 
Supreme Court in the case New Orleans versus 
Steamship Company, 20 Wall, 394, decided that 
the military governing authority 'may do any- 
thing to strengthen itself and to weaken the 
enemy,' and that the Court further stated that 
'there is no limit to the powers that may be 
exerted in such cases save those which are found 
in the laws and usages of war.' " 17 

The Old Spirit 

Despite the cannon that glowered in all the 
streets, Boston's fury at this ironic rejoinder 
nearly broke through all restraint. In the old 
city that had the famous Tea Party among its 
prized achievements, the spirit of that past age 
awoke again, and spread, almost without con- 
certed thought or intention. Wherever men 
could meet they formed in groups to ease their 
minds by free speech, if they could do nothing 
else. In several quarters of the city there were 
incipient riots, suppressed by the police only 

17 This decision covered a case that arose during the Civil 
War, and was cited by the Law Office, Division of Insular 
Affairs, on several occasions to fortify United States procedure 
after the Spanish-American War. 



254 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

just in time to avoid bloody interference by the 
soldiers. 

"We must curb this town," said the Com- 
manding General to the military council in the 
State House. "It is not one to remain cowed 
for long, without repressive measures.' ' 

The council nodded. Next morning's news- 
papers had on their first pages an announce- 
ment that made many readers rub their eyes and 
stare incredulously at the printed page, for on 
it was such a proclamation as might have been 
read in Boston town in the reign of Charles I. 
It was headed : 

SEDITION LAW 

1. Every person resident in the territory occupied by 
the power exercising sovereignty by right of conquest, who 
shall utter seditious words or speeches, or write, publish or 
circulate scurrilous libels against the governing authority, 
or who shall conceal such practices that come to his knowl- 
edge, shall be punished summarily and severely. 

2. Every person who joins a secret society or attends a 
secret meeting for the purpose of advocating sedition or 
rebellion shall be punished summarily and severely. 18 

isA literal extract from the Sedition Act (No. 292, etc.) of 
the Philippine Commission, except that the act provides for 
specific imprisonment and fine. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 255 

Again the citizens ' committee protested. 
Boston lawyers represented to the military 
council that American citizens could not be held 
guilty of sedition or rebellion if they adhered to 
their country. 

Citizens of No Country 

"The inhabitants of conquered territory," 
answered the council, "are citizens of no coun- 
try. They are under the jurisdiction of the oc- 
cupying army ; but they are not even entitled to 
the privileges of citizens of the country which 
controls that army. ' ' 19 

"But mere conquest does not entitle you to 
treat them as rebels,' ' urged the committee. 
' ' They are within their rights to preserve their 
allegiance, so long as they do not violate the 
rules of war by opposing you with arms." 

One of the officers smiled. He opened a 
book. "Once more I must respectfully refer 
you to your own court decisions," he said, and 
read from a United States Supreme Court ver- 
dict: " ' Conquest is a valid title while the vic- 

19 So laid down by nearly all writers on military law who 
touch on this subject. 



256 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

tor maintains exclusive territory of the con- 
quered country. ' ' ' 20 

" There is nothing that we can do," the com- 
mittee reported to the people. It was the re- 
frain that sounded in all the United States just 
then. To the wild projects for desperate de- 
fense that were being broached every day in the 
city of New York, to the frenzied demands that 
the volunteers in the western camps be rushed 
into the field, to the curses directed at the Amer- 
ican army because it refused to fight, the same 
answer formulated itself because there was no 
other. Always, from all quarters, to all de- 
mands and imprecations, the only answer that 
was possible was: " There is nothing that we 
can do ! ' ' 

The city multitudes surrendered wearily to 
the situation; but there were men whom the 
helpless reply drove frantic. 

There were hundreds of these men in New 
York, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Newark, and all 

20 This principle was laid down in regard to territory sub- 
jected to military occupation by the United States during the 
war with Mexico. The United States claimed (and sparingly 
exercised) the right to court martial and execute as rebels 
certain leaders of an insurrection against the military govern- 
ment in New Mexico, 1847-8. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 257 

the towns eastward from there into Connecticut. 
They were militiamen who had not been able to 
join their organizations when they went to the 
front, or whose organizations had been merely 
paper ones. There were members of sports- 
men's clubs, accustomed to the use of heavy- 
caliber fire-arms and to the trail, and there were 
many men who were moved simply by the reck- 
lessness of courage. 21 

During the days while there drifted through 
the United States the broken, incomplete but 
ever-growing story of New England's uprising 
and its fearful suppression, these men had be- 
gun to assemble in Connecticut's country be- 
tween New Haven and Hartford, urged by no 
settled plan but moving to that district simply 
because it was the last American front between 
New York and the invading army. 

The Foe's Slow Advance 

The enemy was moving westward slowly. He 
had to hold out a mighty screen northwestward 
against the American army that now lay beyond 

21 "In many instances the deficiency has reached such a 
figure as to leave militia organizations such in name only." — 
Page 206, last report, General Mills, U. S. A. 



258 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

the Berkshire Hills, holding the land between 
western Connecticut and Albany. That army, 
intact and out of his reach, was a constant, acnte 
danger. It endangered his communications, it 
endangered his base, it endangered his divisions 
that occupied Boston. It forced him to advance 
only in continual readiness for battle on flanks 
and rear-lines. 

During the slow approach the men who had 
gathered between New Haven and Hartford be- 
gan to form some sort of an organization. Al- 
most it evolved itself. 

The enemy pushing forward along the north, 
took Springfield with cavalry and artillery. 
The undefended city surrendered without a 
blow. 

From New Haven and Hartford, to the fac- 
tory cities of Wallingford and Meriden, Mid- 
dletown and New Britain, along all the factory- 
lined valleys, there passed a word that gathered 
workers from shops and idle men from streets. 
All one long day, and all one evening, they 
moved toward the two cities. They seemed 
aimless enough ; but there were leaders who put 
themselves at their head secretly in the night. 

Suddenly they were angry, determined, united 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 259 

bodies of men. Suddenly, like a suddenly awak- 
ened wind, they stormed the great arms facto- 
ries of the two towns. 

They came with guns and pistols. They 
came with crowbars and picks. They came with 
stones, and with nothing except their bare hands. 
They hauled their dead aside and withered un- 
der the fire of the guards, and burst through and 
took the works. 

In Hartford they seized a whole train-load of 
rapid-firers and machine guns that had been 
loaded for the American army. In New Haven 
they took almost four thousand sporting rifles. 

The riot fever spread to Bridgeport. The 
mob arose and seized the cartridge factories. 

The Mad Adventure 

It was a mad thing, springing less from pur- 
pose than from the insanity that invasion had 
laid on men's minds. It could have but one 
mad end. Yet this army of madmen was moved 
and molded by a touch of the American ability 
to "do things" — that very ability on which the 
people might, indeed, have depended with per- 
fect assurance, if only they had not depended on 
it wholly. 



260 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

America did, truly, have men who would fight. 
They were here ; and they were to fight such a 
fight as would be remembered many a long day. 
America had the men to lead, too. Though they 
knew that this was a hopeless thing, they "took 
hold." 

They took hold of men armed with magnificent 
rifles, but of a score of different patterns for dif- 
ferent kinds of sport, and demanding a score of 
different shapes and calibers of cartridges. 
They took hold of infantry militia fragments 
whose companies had had only two or three as- 
semblies a year for target practice with average 
attendances of only 11 or 12 men. They impro- 
vised scout detachments of volunteers with bi- 
cycles and motors. 22 

Young doctors took hold with nothing but 
emergency kits, without ambulances, without lit- 
ters, without even helpers who would know how 
to find a wound or apply a first aid bandage. 

The army of madmen went forward to the 
Connecticut Eiver to hold the western bank 
from Hartford to Middletown. 

They did not know how to dig trenches. 

22 Table No. 9, Report, Division of Militia Affairs, U. S. A., 
1914. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 261 

They dug ditches. They did not know how to 
make defenses for their machine guns. They 
piled trees that would skewer them with splin- 
ters under shell fire, or heaped up rocks that 
would fly into fragments and kill like shrap- 
nel. 

They were all of three thousand men. They 
were the kind of men whom America has ex- 
pected always in times of peace to call to its 
defense. They were callous-handed workers in 
metal and wood and leather; bleached workers 
from woolen mills and cotton spindles; 'long- 
shoremen from the harbor cities of the Sound; 
professional men resolute with the fervor of the 
time ; road-makers and teamsters and shoemak- 
ers ; hunters, yachtsmen, and football players. 

What Americans Could Have Done 

That day along the Connecticut River they 
showed what America's men could have done 
had they learned how to do it in advance and 
had they been armed for the work. 

They lay behind their pitiable defenses, with 
their motley weapons, commanded by men who 
did not know war. They bore the shock of ma- 
chine gun assaults from advance patrols. They 



262 THE INVASION OF AMEKICA 

bore the shock of cavalry charges from scouting 
detachments. 

At Middletown they were attacked in force 
by heavy cavalry that crossed under cover of 
gun-fire and outflanked them, and charged in 
mass. They sent the charge back, broken, with 
many empty saddles. 

They lay under the fire of a 3-inch gun at 
Cromwell for an hour, and endured, and died — 
but they denied the river crossing to a battalion. 

For two long hours they held the river along 
their whole line. It seemed to them that they 
were fighting a great battle. Surely their dead 
testified to it, and the hot fire that beat on them 
testified to it, and across the river, or floating 
down with the stream, were many enemy dead to 
testify to it. 

They cheered and shouted to each other 
hoarsely that they were winning. They 
watched, with ever-growing savage lust, for 
more assailants. 

In the headquarters of the advancing army 
there was received this report from the brigade 
commander: "Two or three thousand raw but 
determined Americans disputing passage of 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 263 

Connecticut Eiver with our advance guards. 
They have machine guns, no artillery. Am 
sending field guns forward. Shall have passage 
clear in an hour. ,, 

"Use ample force," answered the commander. 
1 ' These Americans ! ' • he said to his aid. ' ' They 
aren't to be underestimated. A little more 
preparation — " 

"And we wouldn't be here 1" laughed the aid. 

Thirty Minutes Later 

Thirty minutes afterward, from points wholly 
invisible to the Americans, there burst the shat- 
tering thunder of field-artillery. Explosive 
shells flew over and into the trenches. Shrap- 
nel screamed at them, and burst like sentient 
things right in their faces, to drive rattling bul- 
lets in all directions. 23 

Their machine guns were useless. There was 
nothing in sight at which to fire. The men lay 
face down, clutching dirt, choking with fumes 
and smoke, stunned by the blasting things that 
burrowed into their earth-works and blew them 
apart and tore living bodies to pieces. 

23 Range of four miles. 



264 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

At Rocky Hill a militia company of artillery 
tried to move its gun into better shelter. The 
plow-horses that had been seized to drag it, wild 
with terror, became entangled in the traces and 
fell. Cutting them away, the men wheeled the 
cannon into position by hand. But their ar- 
mory never had been fitted for sub-caliber prac- 
tice, as it never had been fitted for mounted 
instruction. None of the men had been quali- 
fied as first class or even as second class gun- 
ners. They fired, and their shots went wild, 
serving only to betray their situation to the 
enemy. They did not know how to place them- 
selves for protection from indirect fire. So they 
died. 24 

A troop of militia cavalry, trying to move for- 
ward near Hartford, was cut off by an advance 
patrol of enemy cavalry that had crossed the 
river to outflank the defenders from the north. 
The Americans charged. But they were 
mounted on horses never used before for cavalry 
work. The enemy riders were men trained to 
swordsmanship. The American troop had av- 
eraged only 13 men in mounted drill in a whole 

24 Page 231, Report on militia field artillery, General Mills, 
U. S. A., 1914. 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 265 

year, because they had possessed neither horses 
nor armory. 25 

The green brutes reared at the sight of weap- 
ons. They pitched into each other as the enemy 
cavalry dashed at them, and added their iron 
hoofs to the melee. For one brief moment eyes 
stared into eyes, and it was hack and thrust. 
Then the enemy riders were through them, and 
whirled like a gale and swept through them 
again, and killed and killed. 

The Massacre of the Connecticut River 

" Annihilated/ ' reported the scout cavalry a 
little later, when its squadrons came up. ' ' Our 
loss one dead, three slightly wounded.' ' 

Annihilated! Yes, gentlemen of Congress, 
sitting in Washington at that moment and pass- 
ing resolutions and appropriations, and uttering 
fine sentiments about millions for defense and 
not one cent for tribute! There were ugly 
things there on the Connecticut Eiver shore that 
answered you more loudly in their eternal si- 
lence than if they had spoken with a thousand 
angry tongues. 

25 Table 9, militia cavalry statistics, Division of Militia 
Affairs, U. S. A. Annual Report, 1914. 



266 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

That day's battle that filled the fields of Con- 
necticut with dead men's bones to be plowed up 
in many a year afterward, went down in Ameri- 
can history as the massacre of the Connecticut 
Eiver. A massacre it was — an American mas- 
sacre, carefully prepared by elaborate careless- 
ness through many a year before. 

Less than a thousand men, it was said after- 
ward, escaped from the massacre. They 
crawled away down gullies or swam down the 
river, and hid under weeds and panted, and tied 
up their wounds with rags from their ragged 
garments. They were never able to tell what 
had occurred. They knew only that they had 
thought there was victory — and then, in front of 
them, and on their flanks, and behind them, there 
had come flames as if a hot line of blast furnaces 
had opened to blow in their very faces, wherever 
they turned. 

"We have taught them their lesson ! ' ' said the 
hostile commander. "We shall have no more 
trouble. ' ' 

It was true. Western Connecticut was 
broken under the invader's rod as Eastern Mas- 
sachusetts had been broken. That night the 
army occupied Hartford, Meriden, New Britain, 



DEFENDING CONNECTICUT 267 

and New Haven, though not before the arms fac- 
tories had been blown up, to welcome the sol- 
diers with flaming ruins. 

The next morning cavalry detachments began 
cautiously to scout into the Berkshire Hills, to 
feel for the American outposts. 



IX 
THE CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 

When the news of the Battle of Connecticut 
went through the United States, there was a 
temporary end to all patience, to all calculations 
of prudence. There was an end to everything 
except blind passion. The United States was 
not a patient Nation, but no Nation, however 
patient, could have remained so at such a time. 
No man, however deeply admired, could have 
counseled wisdom then. No interests, however 
great, could have controlled. 

All the knowledge that had gone to the pub- 
lic about the utter unreadiness of the freshly 
enlisted volunteers to take the firing line ; all the 
information that had been given to the people 
about the condition of their army ; all the proofs 
that the foe had given with blood and fire of 
his immense superiority — all these were as 
nothing. That the army, if it had fought now, 

268 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 269 

must be destroyed, was as nothing. The cry- 
was that the army must fight ! 

Trusted leaders pointed in vain to the history 
of the United States to prove that whenever its 
raw forces had hurried into battle in obedience 
to popular demand, the result had been only to 
hurry disaster. In vain they pointed to the 
Civil War and the hideous death-tolls paid by 
both sides without military advantage to either. 

Men would not listen. They would not rea- 
son. They hated those who remained cool 
enough to reason. It was the human equation 
that, at some time or another, defies all the com- 
bination of man's intelligence. 

The President Goes to the Army 

No administration, however determined, could 
have ignored it. Secretly, a special train was 
made ready in Washington. Secretly, in the 
night, the President of the United States with 
his advisers and staff boarded it and were taken 
northward. 

No dispatches went ahead of it, except rail- 
road orders to clear tracks. After passing Bal- 
timore, it went by way of Harrisburg and 
Wilkesbarre, avoiding Philadelphia and the city 



270 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

of New York. Through the sad, black iron and 
coal country of Pennsylvania it passed to the 
New York State line without a welcome any- 
where. 

"We might be fugitives/ ' said the President, 
looking out with sleepless eyes. 

At Jefferson Junction an armored train with 
machine guns and a 3-inch rifle slid in ahead of 
them from a siding where it had been waiting. 
An officer entered the President's train and re- 
quested that all shades be kept down. Thus, 
furtively, the Nation's ruler entered Albany. 

Army Headquarters had been a target, like 
the White House, for messages that had shaken 
those to whom they were addressed. More 
than once the Commanding General had felt that 
it was more than human men could bear. More 
than once, in council, officers, infuriated by the 
veiled accusations of cowardice in the dis- 
patches, had spoken in favor of giving the army 
the fatal order to go into action. 

What the Commander Faced 

The President, when he looked at the Gen- 
eral's deeply lined features, knew that the old 
soldier had more to gain from a battle, however 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 271 

disastrous, than from life. "If he does not in- 
terpose between the invader and New York 
City," thought the Chief Magistrate, "he will 
live only to see his name blasted. There will be 
a thousand tacticians in future years who will 
assert that he was a blunderer, if not a traitor.' ' 

"The country demands a battle! I know!" 
The soldier laid before the President a sheaf of 
papers. "Some reports, sir, bearing on the 
matter. ' ' 

The first sheet was a report from brigade 
headquarters. "Twenty batteries of 5.1 inch 
artillery moved westward through New Haven 
last night," it said. "Our spy reports that 
these guns appear to be of the type that is 
known to have a range of seven miles, far out- 
ranging our field guns. Accompanied by heavy 
convoys of shrapnel and explosive shell." 1 

"They are bringing up heavier guns still," 
said the General, selecting another report. 
"Between New London and Saybrook Junction 
flat cars were seen with 11.02 inch howitzers, 
which, we presume, must be the type that throws 

i and 2 From statistics, gathered before the present Euro- 
pean War, of the armament then owned by at least four of 
the great Powers. 



272 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

a 760-pound projectile. We have nothing near 
that type in our artillery to oppose them. As 
they have a range of 12,000 yards, they can be 
placed wherever it may please the enemy, and 
we might as well bombard them with roman can- 
dles as with our guns. ' ' 2 

Men Disabled Before Battle 

The President, without replying, picked up a 
third report. It was from a major of the Medi- 
cal Corps, and ran: 

" A considerable proportion of militia in- 
fantry still suffer severely from blistered feet 
after only a few miles of march over rough 
country. More men are being disabled from ill- 
fitting shoes and unsuitable socks (thread and 
cotton) than from all other causes combined. 
Habit of prophylactic care of the feet almost 
wholly lacking. Few regimental or infirmary 
supplies include foot-powder. ' ' 3 

"If you take men from their office chairs or 
from seats by the side of machines in shops," 
growled one of the staff, "you can't expect them 

3 A literal transcript of the report of two medical officers 
on the conditions existing among good militia troops who 
were ordered out for maneuvers distinctly specified as war 
maneuvers to be conducted under war conditions. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YOEK CITY 273 

to hike the same day. Men who insist on living 
near trolley cars, which is a great American 
habit, must expect to get sore feet after walking 
three miles. In a fifty mile march, sir, this army 
in its present condition will lose fifteen per cent, 
of its militia strength from straggling and fall- 
ing out. ' ' 4 

"But they have improved very greatly, have 
they not f ' ' asked the President. 

"Some of them," answered the General, 
"notably the New York, Massachusetts and 
Pennsylvania troops, are excellent and can go 
into battle with the regulars at any time. 
But — " he turned to an artillery officer. "Will 
you tell the President about yesterday's field 
artillery practice ? ' ' 

What Untrained Batteries Did 

"We sent five untrained batteries to an indi- 
cated position/ ' said the officer. "They had 
practiced only about half a dozen times in the 

4 This figure is purposely placed below what is actually 
expected. During the Connecticut maneuvers, 1909, the strag- 
gling was a subject for comment among both militia and reg- 
ular officers, though the troops did well considering their 
softness. One officer reported that the straggling amounted 
to 15 to 25 per cent, of some regiments. 



274 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

last year, and then they had merely drilled in 
the motions of handling their pieces, as their 
armories were equipped neither for mounted 
drill or sub-caliber practice. When they 
reached the positions that they were to hold, 
they had lost the locations of their own side, and 
within half an hour they were blazing into cover 
occupied by their own infantry. If they had 
been using shell instead of blanks — whew ! ' ' 5 

"We are only just getting several organiza- 
tions to learn how to deploy as skirmishers from 
close order, ' ' said the Commander. i i You know 
how vital that is under fire. Their company 
commanders appear to have had no previous ex- 
perience at it, and the corporals let their squads 
get out of hand hopelessly. There have been 
some sad mix-ups. The result in battle would 
have been sickening. ' ' 6 

"But I tell you," said the President, "the 
country is wild ! The people know that you have 
the whole of a magnificent railroad system from 
here to New York at your disposal. They know 

5 From the report of an umpire at a maneuver under war 
conditions. He reported that the batteries of both sides fired 
into woods actually occupied by their own troops. 

« So reported by a General of Militia, as the result of his 
observations in field practice. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 275 

that the invading army must have been spread 
out tremendously to hold all the territory that it 
occupies. They cannot understand why you 
should not be able to engage the force that is 
advancing on New York." 

What the Public Did Not Know 

The General walked to the wall map. "The 
enemy is thinned out. Yes!" He laid his 
finger on the chart. "But to meet him, we must 
move due south 140 miles down the Hudson Val- 
ley, with the river on one side of us and the Berk- 
shire and Litchfield Hills of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut on the other. We cannot leave men 
behind us to protect that length of line and hold 
open our road for us if we have to retreat. 
When General Sherman marched to Atlanta, he 
left 115,000 men behind him to guard his 300 mile 
line back through Chattanooga to Nashville. 
We have less than fifty thousand men in our 
whole army, even if we scrape together all the 
very latest green arrivals. 

"The moment we leave our base," continued 
the Commander, "the enemy headquarters will 
know it. They will instantly begin a big shift- 
ing of their New England forces. They will 



276 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

push them across into New York State behind 
us, and we'll be trapped.' ' 

"You think that they can concentrate swiftly 
enough 1 ' ' asked the Secretary of War. 

The soldier pulled a paper out of the pile, and 
read: "Observer at Providence reports that 
hostile forces entrained cavalry, field and heavy 
artillery and ammunition columns at regular 
rate of two hours for full military train. Time 
for loading siege material, 3% hours. " 7 

Officers Had Never Handled Men 

He tossed the papers aside. "When did any 
of our officers ever have to handle thirty thou- 
sand men?" he asked. "How many of them 
ever handled as many as ten thousand? Last 
week, two regiments were left without food for 
two meals on a practice march because their 
commissary failed to supply travel rations. 
Day before yesterday seven boxes of provisions 
were found lying in a company street without 
any one to claim them. Those were militia; but 
our own officers equally lack experience in han- 

7 Schedule laid down by General von Bernhardi as the 
maximum time that should be expended by properly trained 
troops under experienced officers. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 277 

dling such a big contract as a whole army. 8 
"Do you know what it means to see that an 
infantry division gets its material? Do you 
know what we've got to send into battle with it? 
It means an ammunition train of 165 4-mule 
wagons, and more than 700 mules and horses. 
Then there are the other supply trains, the pack 
trains and the engineer trains — 135 more wagons 
and 600 animals. There are ninety ambulances 
and wagons with their animals. And this is 
without counting the horses for the cavalry and 
the signal corps ! I tell you, Mr. President, if 
we unload that mess in the face of an enemy like 
the one down there," he pointed southeastward, 
"it will never get back here!" 9 

"And if you stay here! Won't you be at- 
tacked?" asked a member of the President's 
party. 

"I think not." The General turned to the 

8 Army heads have called the attention of Congress and the 
public repeatedly to the fact that officers cannot possibly be 
prepared for the complex work of handling an army if they 
never get an opportunity to learn by actual experience. The 
post system is to blame to a considerable extent. ... Re- 
marks about commissary troubles in this paragraph are based 
on actual occurrences in the field, as set forth in an official 
report. 

» From "The Army in Action." 



278 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

chart again. ' i See here ! He 's got a great big 
territory to hold already. When he has New 
York City and Harbor to control also, I think 
he'll be too well occupied to attack us until he 
brings reinforcements across. At any rate, he 
can't come at us, except from the direction of 
New York City up the narrow river valley, or 
from the direction of Massachusetts through 
the Berkshire Hills. We can make the banks of 
the Hudson a difficult place for him. And the 
longer we can hold on here, the longer the ord- 
nance works at Watervliet can continue to turn 
out the heavy guns that we need so sorely. 
Watervliet, Mr. President, in my eyes, is the 
most precious thing weVe got to guard just 
now. ' ' 10 

"Stay!" Says the President 

The President arose and walked to the win- 
dow. For a quarter of an hour he looked out 
over the rolling country to the East where the 

10 Watervliet, situated near Troy, N. Y., is one of the most 
important Government gun factories in the United States. 
It produces the 12, 14 and 16-inch all steel rifled guns for the 
harbor defenses and is fitted out with enormously expensive 
machinery for making many other different types of ord- 
nance. Its exposed situation, under our present conditions of 
defenselessness, has long been a cause for anxiety. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 279 

soft blue curves of the hills were cloud-like 
against the April sky. Then he returned. 
"Stay where you are," he said, "as long as you 
can, or think wise. New York will have to fall. 
Good-by. We '11 go back to Washington and do 
our best. Good luck to you, and to your Berk- 
shire Hills." 

"They are good American hills," said the 
General, smiling for the first time. "They are 
giving our men the only protection they've had 
against aeroplanes since this thing began." 

The spreading, crowding groves that crowned 
them and made them famous for their loveliness, 
now made the multi-folded Hills a welcome cover 
for the harassed American troops. They re- 
duced to a minimum the effectiveness of scouting 
from the air, and increased to a maximum extent 
the efficiency of cavalry and motor troops that 
knew the country. Among their laureled slopes 
and in their vales and intervales, was good terri- 
tory for artillery defense. 

The rich men whose pleasure grounds they are 
gave the army their motors, their horses and 
themselves. Quick-witted and keen, aware of 
every foot of the ravines and roads and by-roads, 
they helped the picked men who had been 



280 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

selected by the commanders to guard and hold 
the "escapes" through the Hills. 

Americans Hold the Wall 

At the southern end, on the open summit of 
Mount Everett that old settlers prefer to call 
"The Dome," whence the sight can command 
the sweep of the Housatonic Valley through the 
Hills, all the approaches from Massachusetts in 
the eastward, the Litchfield Hills south in Con- 
necticut, and the basin of the Hudson River to 
the west, a signal corps had erected its wireless 
and its heliograph. At their feet, on the lower 
slopes, hidden in the great wild laurel that is 
most beautiful there, was artillery. 

There were guns at Great Barrington. At 
Stockbridge gleaming batteries guarded the road 
from Hartford, which once had been the stage 
coach road between Boston and Albany. 

Limbers and guns jolted past the great houses 
and estates of Lenox and vanished in the cover 
on both sides, to be posted on the hilly ground 
that commanded the Housatonic Valley. More 
guns passed under the elms of high Pittsfield. 
Motors and cavalry and cannon held North 
Adams and Williamstown, where Williams Col- 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 281 

lege stood almost deserted because students and 
professors had volunteered to act as sentinels 
and patrols. 

On the old trail that had been the trail of the 
Mohawk Indians of New York when they went 
on the war-path against Massachusetts, men in 
olive drab were scouting and lying in cover with 
machine guns. 

On the green hills behind Bennington, Ver- 
mont, where Yankee breastworks had been 
thrown up in the Revolution, there were more 
batteries. Here outposts and patrols guarded 
the road leading to Lake George, the last gate- 
way to the territory held by the American forces 
in New York State. North of this were Ver- 
mont's Green Mountains — barriers indomitable 
as of old when Ethan Allen, wroth at Congress, 
threatened to retire into those fastnesses and 
"wage eternal warfare against Hell, the Devil 
and Human Nature in general. ' ' 

Impassable by Bail 

The long barrier thus running northward from 
Connecticut like a wall separating New England 
and New York, would check any except a power- 
ful, well-supported force, advancing with the de- 



282 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

termination to break through. Long before 
such an army could make its way, the Americans 
could either front the enemy in battle, or retire 
safely beyond his reach. 

The invaders could not break through the wall 
by rail. The railroad line that led from Green- 
field, Massachusetts, to Troy and Albany, had in 
it a famous link that was vital to its operation. 
This link was the celebrated Hoosac Tunnel, 
bored for 4% miles through Hoosac Mountain. 
It was now a solid mass of blasted and piled rock 
that could not be cleared away in the time de- 
manded by any military operation. 

In the south, on the Long Island Sound coast 
of Connecticut, were other ruins almost as big 
and as costly. They were the wreckage of 
Bridgeport's big cartridge factories, blown up 
as the hostile patrols entered the outskirts of the 
town. 

It was the last source of ammunition and arms 
supply in New England. With it there were 
lost, too, three submarines that were on the 
stocks in the harbor ship yards, and the works 
that had been manufacturing naval sea-planes 
and military tractors for the army's flying 
scouts. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 283 

The aerial motor works of Hyde Park in 
Massachusetts, the Marblehead factory that 
made gun-carrying convertible land and marine 
flying machines, and the Norwich factory for 
tractor biplanes and hydro-monoplanes had been 
captured almost in the beginning. 11 

New England's Conquest Complete 

As the army entered Bridgeport, another 
column advancing parallel with it captured the 
great manufacturing city of Waterbury in the 
North. With these two cities, the invader's con- 
quest of New England was complete. Except- 
ing only Portland in Maine, he now possessed 
every city of more than 30,000 population. He 
possessed every source of manufacture. He 
held every port on the northern shore of Long 
Island Sound. He held the three great harbors 
of New England. In addition to the vessels 
building in Bridgeport, he possessed Fore Eiver, 
with a battleship and two destroyers on the 
ways; Quincy, with eight submarines in course 

n It has been pointed out often that within a radius of 
less than a hundred miles around New York City there is a 
large percentage of the works and factories on which the 
Government depends for much of its war material. 



284 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

of construction, and the Portsmouth Navy Yard 
with one. 12 

The division that had taken Waterbury turned 
southerly to the coast after it passed through 
that town, to join the division that had taken 
Bridgeport and was pressing westward. 

An hour later the American army, apprised by 
its spies, began to block the rock cuts on all the 
New York Central systems leading northward 
out of New York City. 

When New York heard this news, it knew that 
it had been abandoned. 

In that moment of despair, the population 
would have done what every loosely knit, hetero- 
geneous multitude does almost spontaneously in 
the face of catastrophe. It would have grown 
into mobs to riot against itself. If the huge 
population had been organized, if it had pos- 
sessed a single will, nothing could have pre- 
vented it and nothing could have withstood it. 
But facing the overwhelming numbers were a 
few thousand men who were moved by a single 
will and who were firmly welded together for its 
accomplishment. 

12 Vessels actually building in places named when the last 
annual edition of the Navy Year Book was published. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 285 

The Power of Organized Discipline 
They were the police. Whatever their faults 
were, they possessed the one thing that all the 
city and all the United States lacked. It was 
Organized Discipline. In the face of millions 
unorganized and nndisciplined, the 11,000 police- 
men of the city, armed with no visible weapons 
except clubs, maintained the peace. They 
scarcely needed the assistance of the ten thou- 
sand men who had been enlisted hastily as volun- 
teer militia and deputy sheriffs, and who pa- 
troled the streets with clubs and riot guns. 13 

Their work was facilitated by the fact that for 
many days past there had been a great disarma- 
ment in the city. Under the autocratic latitude 
of martial law, all suspected individuals had 
been searched wherever they were met. Houses 
had been visited. Warned by the riots in Con- 
necticut, the authorities had stripped every 
sporting goods shop and every pawnbroker's 
establishment of weapons, and stored them 
under heavy guard in the armories. 

13 Strength of total force, including all individuals, October 
1, 1914, 10,740. It is held that New York's conformation, 
long and narrow, makes it an unusually easy city to control, 
as it is possible to prevent mobs from combining, and trouble 
can be confined to limited areas. 



286 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

It had been a necessary precaution. During 
the days that came after the enemy forces had 
begun to land, factory after factory and industry 
after industry had stopped. Now the greater 
part of the city was dead. Seventeen thousand 
longshoremen and stevedores loitered in the 
water-front streets, with ten thousand sailors of 
all nationalities, whose ships were tied up. 
Fifty thousand unskilled laborers wandered 
around town with nothing to do. Altogether it 
was estimated that on this day there were 200,- 
000 people in New York whose occupations had 
been lost, and fully as many again who were 
working on half time. 14 

The Wholly Helpless Metropolis 

The leaders of commerce and finance, the most 
resourceful of the city's business men, were 
utterly unable to suggest anything. The Cham- 
ber of Commerce, that had met many crises and 
evolved practical plans of action, could suggest 
nothing now. 

The banks were practically closed. The 
United States Treasury Department already had 
declared that the center of the Second Federal 

i* Bureau of Census, U. S., 1914. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 287 

Reserve District would be considered as tem- 
porarily merged with the Third District in Phila- 
delphia. 

The fire insurance companies were refusing all 
new business, and had called attention to the fact 
that existing policies on every kind of property 
provided that they were not liable for loss 
" caused directly or indirectly by invasion, insur- 
rection, riot, civil war or commotion, or military 
or usurped power." 

There were thousands of other contracts and 
agreements that would lapse automatically the 
moment the first hostile soldier set foot in the 
city. Men had laughed for a generation at the 
mediaeval expression in many printed legal 
forms that provided that the signers were not 
responsible for anything that might occur under 
"the acts of any foreign Prince or Potentate." 
Now, suddenly, these mediaeval words were alive. 

The mails were piled high in the Post Office 
and in every substation. The whole United 
States was striving to settle urgent affairs with 
the city, and the city was trying as desperately to 
settle with the United States. It was impossible 
to handle the mass. It remained in bags for 
days, untouched, while the postal forces, heavily 



288 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

increased from near-by cities, struggled with the 
accumulations of days before. 

The long distance telephone systems were so 
crowded that connections could be obtained only 
by asking for them many hours in advance. 
Telegraph dispatches were twenty-four hours 
old before they could be forwarded, and steadily 
their increasing accumulation was leaving the 
armies of swift operators farther behind. 

Days of Frantic Perplexity 

During the days of frantic perplexity there 
had been talk of dismantling the factories and 
shipping their machineries to the interior. But 
when the owners of the city 's 26,000 manufactur- 
ing establishments faced the problem, they 
realized that it could not be done. They were 
not like the government that could afford to pull 
plants apart and move them at more expense 
than would be involved in building new ones. 15 

They were as helpless as their 500,000 em- 
ployees. To leave their city meant for owners 

is Census Office Tabular Statement issued in 1911. Figures 
are for all boroughs of Greater New York, and include only 
establishments conducted under factory system. Building and 
similar industries and small establishments producing less 
than $500 worth of products a year are not counted. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YOEK CITY 289 

and workers alike to go away bare-handed and 
pauperized. There was nothing to do except to 
stay. 

All these manufactories and industries of the 
city had labored so furiously in the last weeks to 
produce merchandise and ship it that at last the 
railroads were unable to handle the rush of 
freight. Every yard was piled high with goods 
destined for the interior that could not be loaded. 
All the sidings were clogged. There were lines 
of freight trains with not a gap between them 
stretching from the Hudson River straight 
across the New Jersey meadows and on into the 
yards and sidings of New Jersey towns miles 
from New York. 

No freight was coming in. For three days 
everything had been side-tracked far away from 
the city, in order to clear the tracks for provi- 
sions. The authorities, with the Citizens' Com- 
mittee, unable to guess what the enemy might do, 
had decided that all efforts must be subservient 
to the effort to stock the town with food. 

Already the city had taken over the entire 
business of distributing food-stuffs. Nothing 
could be sold except in quantities and at prices 
fixed by ordinance. 



290 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

The Edge of Famine 

The city's people often had been told by their 
statisticians that they always were within a few 
days of famine. Now they realized what it 
meant. The congested tracks had cut down 
their coal supply. All interurban transporta- 
tion had to be reduced to save power. Some- 
where in the narrow valleys leading from Lake 
Champlain on crowded rails were the enormous 
rolls of paper needed to feed the city's presses. 
The morning newspapers had to be cut down to 
four pages of small size. There was no sporting 
news in the papers, no foreign news and no 
financial news. 

Within the short time that had elapsed since 
the occupation of New England's mill cities, the 
city had used up a great part of its stocks of 
textiles. There was shortage of coffee, of 
spices, of all the stuffs that ordinarily came in 
by sea. 

Hostile cruisers and destroyers patrolled all 
the Atlantic coast, taking the precaution merely 
to stay out of range of the harbor defenses. 
They captured every vessel, large or small, that 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 291 

ventured to leave a port, and sent it into Narra- 
gansett Bay or Buzzards Bay as a prize. 

So thoroughly had New York's sea-gate been 
locked, that it had trouble even to dispose of its 
garbage, because tugboat captains feared to ven- 
ture far enough to sea to dump it. 

Wherever men turned, whatever they tried to 
do, it was as if there lay a great, dead hand on 
the city. 

Closing in on New York 

The only activity that remained in full prog- 
ress, apparently, was the activity of the news 
bulletin boards. The newspapers had erected 
them everywhere, in all the squares. Far into 
the night they were served. 

Almost continually since the Battle of the Con- 
necticut they had been announcing the names of 
New England places successively taken by the 
approaching army. Now, suddenly, their news 
shifted. A bulletin went up dated from Eaton's 
Neck, Long Island. " Large fleet of steamer s," 
it said, "crossing Long Island Sound from direc- 
tion of New Haven, apparently bound for this 
shore.' ' 



292 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

"Two passenger steamers of New Haven 
Line, ' ' said the next bulletin, ' ' five large freight- 
ers, eight lighters. Making for coast east of 
Oyster Bay. ' ' 

From Oyster Bay came a dispatch : ' ' Fifteen 
vessels putting into Cold Spring Harbor, with 
large number of troops. It is believed that these 
are forces convoyed over the Sound in vessels 
captured at New Haven, to move against New 
York through Long Island." 

" Village of Cold Spring occupied. Troops 
approaching Oyster Bay," was the news that 
grew in great letters on the boards an hour later. 
Nothing more came from either of these two 
points. Evidently the enemy had cut communi- 
cations at once. 

Along the Connecticut Shore 

News began to arrive now from the Connecti- 
cut shore. The advancing forces, having joined 
west of Bridgeport, were moving in mass along 
the contracted coastal plain of southwestern 
Connecticut. Troop trains, preceded by ar- 
mored pilot engines, rolled in long procession 
along the whole system of the New York, New 
Haven and Hartford Railroad, all the tracks of 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 293 

which had been repaired by civilians impressed 
to do the work. On all the many tracks there 
was traffic in only one direction, — westward, 
toward New York. The trains, moving in 
echelon, went forward steadily as clock work. 

Along the magnificent motor road that was the 
old Boston Post Road, cavalry and motor patrols 
and detachments advancing in the same direc- 
tion, seized town after town. 

They occupied Fairfield, where Paul Revere 
stopped over night on his way to report to Wash- 
ington. They entered with swords clanking and 
imperious motor horns croaking into old Sauga- 
tuck, where the Colonials had fought General 
Tryon when he landed to burn Danbury. They 
took Norwalk and South Norwalk. They quar- 
tered men in the estates of Darien. 

They swept on through rich Stamford, whose 
inhabitants are Connecticut people by residence 
and New Yorkers by occupation. They took 
Greenwich. 

The Invaders of Long Island 

From Roslyn, Long Island, came word that 
all the invading vessels that could find room at 
the Cold Spring wharves were unloading ma- 



294 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

terial. The character of the derricks that had 
been rigged, said the report, indicated that ex- 
tremely heavy guns were being handled. 

A bulletin that went up immediately afterward 
announced that the army was crossing the State 
line from Connecticut into New York, and that 
advance patrols already were passing through 
the New York State town of Port Chester. 

The enemy was now only twenty-five miles 
from New York City. This, and the actual en- 
trance into State territory, caused a senseless, 
headlong fright. It spread even into the coun- 
cils of the Citizens' Committee and city officials 
in the City Hall. Men jumped to their feet and 
exclaimed that the bridges over the Harlem must 
be dynamited at once. Others proposed to de- 
molish the great suspension bridges by cutting 
away the suspending rods and letting the road- 
ways fall into the East Kiver, that the Long 
Island invader might be kept from crossing. 

It was only the final flare-up of nerve-rasped, 
helplessly cornered men. The least intelligent 
people in the streets could perceive that nothing 
except cannons, and cannons again, could stop 
this invader who came with a war-machine that 
made war a matter of systematic business. As 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 295 

Boston had learned it, so New York was learning 
it. There conld not be even the barren relief of 
desperate, futile activity. The city, richer than 
many a kingdom, more populous than any State 
in the Union except three, was as utterly unable 
to ward off its doom as a trapped animal. 
Trapped by its own wealth, it could only wait for 
the hunter to take it. 

If any men adhered to the belief that the city 
might gain anything by destroying its ap- 
proaches, a telephone message that came through 
from Port Chester presently was sufficient to 
convince even the most recklessly daring that it 
would be madness in the face of the iron will that 
actuated the enemy. The telephone call was 
from the corps commander, who asked for the 
Mayor. 

"I have the honor,' ' he said, "to inform you 
that the American army, having abandoned the 
defense of the City of New York and surround- 
ing territory, all military resistance against us 
has ceased, and we claim occupation. Under the 
rules of war, your civilian citizens lay them- 
selves open to penalties if they destroy bridges, 
railways, or other lines of communication. 
Should such destruction occur, I shall have to 



296 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

exact compensation for any suffering that it 
may cause to the troops under my command." 

"Invader Can Do What He Pleases" 

' ' He is straining the law ! ' ' cried one of the 
Citizens ' Committee who was an authority on in- 
ternational law. "He has not yet occupied the 
territory contiguous to the city." 

"I think that he has made his occupation 
good," said another. "In our own Army's 
Rules of Warfare, paragraph 290 expressly 
states that 'it is sufficient that the occupying 
army can, within a reasonable time, send de- 
tachments of troops to make its authority felt 
within the occupied district. ' ' ' 

"It makes little difference," interposed the 
Mayor. "We can't take him before a Court of 
Appeals to argue hair-splitting distinctions. He 
has us, and can do to us what he pleases. He 
needs only the color of law to go to any ex- 
tremity. We should be insane to argue with 
him. The only thing to do is to give renewed 
and urgent orders that the population must ab- 
solutely avoid any act of violence. ' ' 

Again the cold logic of inexorable circum- 
stances forced humble submission. Through all 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 297 

the districts north of the Harlem and through 
Westchester County almost to the line of the 
enemy patrols, there was sent by every possible 
method of communication the following warn- 
ing: 

"The invading forces assert occupation of the 
territory in which you reside. Under this occu- 
pation, any act of disorder involving raiding, 
espionage, damage to railways, war material, 
bridges, roads, canals, telegraphs or other means 
of communication is punishable by death as war 
treason. Communities in which such acts occur 
may be punished collectively. All persons are 
warned earnestly to yield full obedience to the 
occupying military forces and to abstain from all 
offensive acts. ' ' 16 

A Matter of Lawyers' Logic 
Thus for the men of New York war was no 
matter of glorious resistance or of a splendid 
death. It was a matter of cold lawyers' logic 
with imprisonment or execution as felons the 
only answer should they try to assert their man- 
hood. 

is Paragraph 373, Acts Punished As War Treason : Rules of 
Land Warfare, published for the information and government 
of the armed land forces of the United States, April 25, 1914. 



298 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

The knowledge held all the territory passive. 
Men and horses and motors moved into West- 
chester County with no more opposition than if 
they were pleasure-seekers moving through 
friendly country. Guns jolted along the high- 
ways with their artillerists sitting at ease. The 
Westchester hills and valleys echoed no shots, 
no cries of battle. 

In every village and town the American flag 
fluttered down from the flag-staffs of schools 
and town halls. 

The corps commander that evening established 
his headquarters in one of the great houses in 
the famous residence colony of Orienta Point, 
Mamaroneck. His columns, advancing along 
the shore, spread out, occupied New Rochelle 
and Mount Vernon, and encamped for the night 
in a great line that stretched from the Long 
Island Sound to the Hudson River, fencing New 
York City on the north with a wall of men and 
artillery. 

It was a wall of silence. Not a word came 
through to the city from Yonkers, from Mount 
Vernon, from Pelham, or from any of the other 
places already taken. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 299 

The Battle in the Night 

Only the harbor defenses of the city were 
still speaking to each other. From the forts on 
Throgs Neck in Westchester County and from 
Fort Totten on Long Island, the commanders at 
Forts Hamilton and Wadsworth in the Narrows 
received requests for more men. Large forces, 
said the Sound defenses, were closing in rapidly 
to invest them on land from the rear. It would 
be an artillery and infantry fight in which the 
mammoth coast guns could take little part, if 
any. The end was certain if reinforcements 
could not be sent through the East River and the 
Sound. 

The commanders of the Narrows were helpless 
to give aid. The commanders of the Sandy 
Hook defenses were helpless. All the men, regu- 
lars and militia, of the coast artillery who could 
be obtained, were not enough. Fort Hamilton, 
being on the Long Island shore itself, dared not 
denude itself further than it had done. At any 
moment there might be an attack on it, too. The 
southern defenses had no choice but to tell the 
eastern defenses that they must do the best they 
could. 



THE ATTACK ON THE NEW YORK 
DEFENCES 




KEYPORT 



A. Attack on Ft. Totten. B. Attack on Ft. Schuyler. 
C and D. Course of Troops Capturing New Jersey Manufacturing 
Cities. EE. Attack on Sandy Hook Forts. 
300 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 301 

It was about one o 'clock in the morning when 
the people of northern Long Island, and the in- 
habitants of the Borough of the Bronx and 
Westchester County, sprang from their beds in 
wild alarm. Without warning, as if a hurricane 
had struck with instant concentrated force, all 
their windows had crashed. Their walls were 
shaking, and pictures and plaster falling. The 
air itself was shaking like a throbbing pulse. 

It was like no gun-fire that men ever had 
imagined. It was not a series of explosions. It 
was like one explosion, whose crescent violence 
would not dwindle. The people of far Brooklyn 
and the people of lower Manhattan heard it. To 
their ears it was as if all the thunders of a storm- 
riven Heaven had been loosed to roll incessantly. 

Bands of Flame 

Men on vantage points along the Sound that 
night saw the attacking lines from end to end 
plainly as if it were day. So continuous was 
their fire, that it painted their positions with 
broad, unwavering bands of flame. It needed 
not the star bombs and rockets that curved 
everywhere under the sky to fall glaring into the 
defenses. It needed not the magnesium lights 



302 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

that floated from parachutes dropped by aero- 
planes. On both sides of the Sound the night 
was a red sea. 

Into the mortar pits and gun emplacements of 
the defenses, like a red surf from that red sea, 
beat the unending fire. Shrapnel that wailed 
like the bride of the storm, and flew apart in the 
air, and flung bullets as if mines had burst inside 
of the defense! Eleven inch shells that ham- 
mered into concrete facing, and split it apart 
with the irresistible agony of their explosion! 
Five inch shell and solid projectile! Bombs 
from the air, and every agency that man had yet 
devised to wreck and destroy ! 

As suddenly as it had begun, the fire stopped. 
The night became utterly still. The rockets 
ceased curving. But in all the defenses there 
shone white glares, from search-lights and mag- 
nesium flares, illuminating rushing masses of 
men who clambered over the ruins of guns and 
mounds, and took the works. There was none 
left to oppose them. 

When the dawn came, the watchers rubbed 
their eyes. The great defenses lay apparently 
unharmed. Their mounds and embankments 
betrayed nothing of the ruin that the night's bat- 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 303 

tie had worked within. But against the bright- 
ening sky there arose a visible sign of what had 
been done. The flag of the Coalition floated 
over them and greeted the American sunrise. 

Within a few hours after dawn, artillery began 
to move through Long Island's boulevards 
toward Brooklyn. North of the city, the army 
began marching through the Borough of the 
Bronx toward the Harlem River. Before noon, 
guns were posted along the Harlem Heights, on 
University Heights, at High Bridge, and down 
past the mouth of the Harlem River. The Long 
Island Railroad brought guns to the high ground 
behind Newtown Creek, to the summit of East- 
ern Parkway, and to the Prospect Park Slope. 

Captured Vessels Enter River 

Through Hell Gate into the East River came 
a motley fleet — Sound and River steamers cap- 
tured at New Haven and Bridgeport, wall-sided 
freighters and lighters, side-wheelers and screw 
propellers, and a flotilla of motor boats, the pick 
of the beautiful little navy of pleasure that filled 
all the Sound harbors. 

This fleet anchored in a long line below Black- 
well 's Island close under the Manhattan shore. 



304 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

All the larger vessels had guns on their forward 
and upper decks. As soon as the craft had 
swung to the tide, the weapons were pointed at 
the city. 

Then the telephone bell in the City Hall called 
the Mayor again. The corps commander, speak- 
ing from temporary quarters in the University 
of New York buildings, announced that he 
wished to send commissioners into the city to 
treat with the authorities for the terms of capitu- 
lation. He desired that the Mayor send an 
escort to meet them at the Lenox Avenue Bridge 
over the Harlem. 

None of the people in the streets realized that 
the automobiles that sped down Lenox Avenue a 
few hours later, through Central Park and down 
Broadway, were bearing enemy soldiers. The 
population had become accustomed to men in 
field uniforms hurrying through the city. 

Demand Surrender of Forts 

Arrived in the City Hall, the commissioners 
presented a demand signed by the commander, 
for unconditional surrender of the city. The 
Mayor and his advisers read it, and turned to the 
soldiers. 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 305 

"What does this mean?" asked the Mayor, 
pointing to a clause that called for the surrender 
of all fortifications with troops and munitions of 
war. "We possess no fortifications. " 

"It means Forts Hamilton and Wadsworth, on 
the Narrows," answered the Chief Commis- 
sioner. 

"But those are United States property," said 
the Mayor. "We have no authority over 
them. ' ' 

* ' Then I should advise you to consult with the 
commandant of these places at once," answered 
the Commissioner. "Their surrender is an in- 
dispensable condition in the terms of capitula- 
tion." 

The Mayor reached for the telephone. i l Stop 
all other business, however important," he said 
to the operator. "Connect me with the Com- 
mandant at Fort Hamilton." 

His conversation with that officer was brief. 
"He declines absolutely to surrender any part 
of the defenses or other government property, ' ' 
he reported. 

"Then, sir," said the officer, rising, "I regret 
to inform you that we shall shell the city. We 
are authorized to give you twenty-four hours. 



306 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

Precisely at the end of that time, we shall order 
the firing to begin. I call your attention to the 
fact that our artillery, as at present placed, com- 
mands the Borough of Manhattan to about 59th 
Street, and that our guns in Brooklyn command 
a great part of the most valuable sections of that 
borough. You will take note, also, that guns on 
the vessels anchored in the river can sweep both 
the New York and Brooklyn streets." 

Claims That City Is Unfortified 

"But," exclaimed an old Judge who was on 
the Citizens' Committee, "we are willing to 
surrender the city without opposition. As a 
matter of fact, it lies wide open to your en- 
trance. You cannot possibly mean to bombard 
an undefended and unfortified town!" 

Without hesitation the officer drew a paper 
from his pocket and presented it. It read: 
i l The City of New York, having Forts Hamilton 
and Wadsworth not only within its harbor 
limits, but actually within its municipal limits, 
is plainly a fortified place under all accepted 
definitions. Also, while troops occupy these 
forts the town clearly falls under the definition 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 307 

of a ' defended place,' under the clause that 'a 
place that is occupied by a military force is a 
defended place.' " 17 

With a bow he handed the paper to the Mayor. 

"We shall bombard the city within twenty- 
four hours," he repeated. 

The New York men looked at each other. 
"We are quite helpless, sir," said the old Judge, 
then. "We cannot force United States officers 
to surrender. I propose to my colleagues that 
a deputation shall go to Washington at once to 
lay your terms before the President as Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. I as- 
sure you that we shall represent to him, most 
strongly, the advisability of yielding. Will you, 
for your part, give us more time ? ' ' 

"I cannot go beyond my orders," answered 
the officer. "Twenty-four hours, I fear, is the 
extreme limit. It will give you ample time, 
since the matter to be considered is most simple. 
You might inform His Excellency the President, 

17 "A town surrounded by detached forts is considered 
jointly with such forts as an indivisible whole, as a defended 
place. A place that is occupied by a military force or 
through which such a force is passing, is a defended place." — 
Bombardments, Assaults and Sieges, Kules of Land Warfare, 
U. S. A. 



308 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

if you wish, that we have succeeded in reducing 
and taking Forts Schuyler, Slocum and Totten. 
We shall proceed to invest Fort Hamilton be- 
fore to-morrow morning. Surrender will pre- 
vent useless loss of life and destruction of 
property. ' ' 

Government Surrenders Forts 

A special train brought the deputation into 
Washington before daylight next morning. 
The New York men went at once to the White 
House where they were received by the Presi- 
dent, who had not been in bed. "You have no 
doubt that they mean to make good their threat 
of bombardment 1 ' ' asked the President, after 
receiving their report. ' ' Then, gentlemen, there 
is only one action for this Government to take. ' ' 
He sighed, and echoed the refrain of all the past 
days. " There is nothing else that we can 
do." 

An hour later the wires to New York, cleared 
by orders from the War Department, carried a 
dispatch to the commandants at Fort Hamilton 
and Fort Wadsworth. It ordered them to sur- 
render. 

From his headquarters the enemy commander 



CAPTUEE OP NEW YORK CITY 309 

ordered detachments to go down the harbor in 
boats and occupy the captured defenses. Then 
he sent his troops forward into the City. 

And now the New Yorkers who had expected 
that their streets would be flooded by a great 
army, were amazed at the ease and simplicity 
with which the city fell into military control. 
Instead of brigades entering the city, there were 
not even regiments. Troops of cavalry, com- 
panies of infantry, single machine-gun detach- 
ments, moving separately down separated ave- 
nues, with big intervals between them, were all 
the force that entered. 

Some boatloads of men and artillery passed 
down the river and landed in Brooklyn, some 
to occupy the Navy Yard and others to reenf orce 
the men who had come in through Long Island ; 
but the army remained outside, holding the 
northern districts from the Sound to the Hud- 
son, and guarding the Hudson River and Put- 
nam Valleys against surprise attack from the 
direction of Albany. 

An Easy City to Occupy 

The officers in charge of the men who entered 
the city asked no questions and required no 



310 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

directions. Unhesitatingly each led his force to 
the point that he wanted. Within two hours 
New York was wholly in the hands of the sol- 
diers. 

Nobody had thought of it before. Now, all at 
once, when it was accomplished, it amazed the 
people of New York to learn how easy it was to 
control the city's whole life, civic and commer- 
cial. 

A battalion of infantry occupied the Grand 
Central Terminal. Another battalion took the 
great Pennsylvania terminal with its under- 
river tunnels to New Jersey and Long Island. 
Detachments appeared at the Twenty-third 
Street and Forty-second Street ferries over the 
Hudson Eiver and by that one seizure controlled 
all railroad connections with the West from up- 
town. The occupation of half a dozen other 
Hudson Eiver railroad ferries down-town, and 
of the Hudson Terminal Tube System, com- 
pleted the entire control of all the city's railroad 
traffic in every direction. 

Equally simple was the control of its com- 
munications. Men appeared at the two great 
telegraph buildings and at the telephone build- 
ing. Within half an hour they had every trunk 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 311 

line of wires in their hands and could strike 
the city dumb at will. 

Thus less than three thousand men had their 
fingers on the big town's spinal nerves, and 
could paralyze it with a slight pressure. 

Still Easier to Guard 

It was still easier to control the city from a 
military point of view. The citizens who had 
expected to see their streets commanded by can- 
non on limbers, did not at first comprehend why 
there were hardly any of these to be seen, while 
machine gun detachments scattered and disap- 
peared as soon as they got well into the town. 
Only gradually did the citizens discover that 
their big, sprawling metropolis was being held 
subject by a very simple utilization of the city's 
characteristic feature. 

This feature was the sky-scraper. To the eye 
of the soldier, these high buildings were nothing 
so much as inviting and magnificent eminences 
for controlling the street-valleys and their popu- 
lation below. 

Four men with a machine gun and abundance 
of ammunition in one of these stone and steel 
summits could control more area than half a 



312 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

dozen heavy field gun batteries posted in the 
streets could command. 

These sentinel watchers were as aloof and as 
sure as fate. They could neither be rushed by 
a mob nor sniped from concealment. At a word 
from the telephone in their eyries, they could 
start death dancing among the pygmy hordes far 
under them. 

From the top of the Woolworth Building two 
of the little guns pointed down into Broadway. 
Turned southward, they could sweep the town as 
far as the Battery. Eastward, they could rain 
their steel- jacketed bullets into the river front 
streets and over the two lower bridges that cross 
the East Eiver. Northward, they had Broad- 
way as far up as Canal Street under their fire. 

They were supplemented by a gun on top of 
the great Municipal Building. It held a good 
part of the crowded tenement house district of 
the Lower East Side under its zone of fire, not- 
ably the doubtful sections of Cherry Street and 
other areas known to the police. 

Church Towers as Gun Stations 

On the tall towers of the suspension bridges 
themselves were other detachments with a gun 



CAPTURE OF NEW YORK CITY 313 

each. The churches were not forgotten by the 
soldiers. The graceful steeple of Grace Church, 
standing at an acute angle of Broadway so that 
it can be seen from far down town, had been be- 
fore men's eyes so long that they had ceased, 
almost, to note its soft beauty. Now they 
looked at it with a new and acute perception, for 
its steeple held a gun that pointed down Broad- 
way, whose southern zone of fire would just 
about reach to where the northern zone of fire 
from the Woolworth Building would end. 

Trinity, too, had a gun in its tower, point- 
ing down Wall Street. North and south on 
upper Broadway, guns on the Flatiron Build- 
ing could reach any important street or any 
place where dangerous crowds might conceiv- 
ably form. This eminence controlled both 
Madison and Union Squares. The tower of 
Madison Square Garden, near-by, also was 
armed. From it men could watch and reach any 
part of the East Side that was out of reach of 
the detachments in the bridge towers. Uptown 
New York was governed more easily still. The 
wide, geometrically regular streets with many 
open squares, were overlooked by tall apartment 
buildings and hotels that commanded long 



314 THE INVASION OF AMEKICA 

sweeps of avenue. As a result, many of the city 
squares and smaller parts had no artillery in 
them at all, and others had only half a battery. 

The people knew that wherever they might 
move, they were within the range of cannon that 
were loaded and ready. Their Citizens ' Com- 
mittee and their officials worked under guns. 
Every foot of their Great White Way could be 
changed into a Way of Death at a moment's 
notice. Their women could not shop, their chil- 
dren could not play, except under the menace of 
weapons. 

Small need was there in New York City of the 
many placards and notices warning the people 
against disorder. Every man's eye was on 
every other man; and had one plotted mischief 
or rebellion, there would have been a hundred 
witnesses ready to suppress him, to betray him 
— anything to prevent those steel devils in the 
city towers from setting death loose in the 
streets ! 



X 
THE PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 

Not until the City of New York actually was 
surrendered did the people of the Middle and 
Far West become startled into a really acute 
perception of the catastrophe that had fallen on 
the whole country. 

Though they were fiery with patriotism and 
anger, and though they were giving not only 
lavishly but extravagantly of their wealth and 
men, they were free, unconquered and un- 
touched. They had seen no invader. With a 
suddenly freshened realization of the hugeness 
of the country, they had attained the conviction 
that there was little danger that any foe possibly 
could reach them from the Atlantic. 

They were willing to defend the East with all 
that they had. They were willing to toss to the 
air all their royal plans for the splendid future 
that was all but built. They were the real 
America, and they were willing to ruin them- 

315 



316 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

selves and die for America. But — the men of 
Chicago were a thousand miles from an enemy. 
Three thousand miles separated the men of the 
Pacific from the armed enemies in New Eng- 
land. 

So their customary life and their business had 
continued. They continued to work and barter 
and plan. The loss of the industries of New 
England had made itself felt at once, but there 
was an enormous land left. Even the locking 
of all the Atlantic and Gulf ports with the at- 
tendant calamities could not wholly shatter their 
great web of trade. 

Pacific Remains Open 

Their commerce could go and enter through 
their own ports unimpeded, for happily in this 
crisis there was no danger threatening from 
across the Pacific. 

Therefore, though the surrender of Boston 
had shaken them, it had not terrified them. The 
great inland country clung to the belief that the 
army would do something. During the enemy 's 
slow movement through Connecticut in the ad- 
vance toward New York, the people of the West 
remained inspired by that hope, as men in past 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 317 

ages, stricken dumb by a darkened Heaven and 
a smoking mountain, still clung to the belief that 
a kindly miracle would interpose to save them, 
though the earth of their market places was 
trembling under their feet. 

That spiritual self-defense with which men 
armor themselves against inevitable fates had 
not given way until the Administration an- 
nounced the surrender of the City of New York 
and its two great forts, with the statement : 

"The President assumes full responsibility. After a 
careful examination of the situation in person, he issued 
orders, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the 
United States, that the army in the field should offer no 
opposition." 

Then the West began to fear with a great fear 
that its Pacific coast was not safe, after all. It 
thought, appalled, that an enemy so formidable 
and successful, confronting opposition so futile, 
might succeed in breaking the defenses of the 
Panama Canal as easily as he had broken the 
defenses of the Atlantic. 

Panama Canal Safe 

But the Panama Canal was being held. The 
United States fleet, having failed to prevent the 



318 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

hostile landing on the New England coast, had 
turned at once to defend the one vital spot that it 
could protect even against superior numbers. 
That was the Caribbean entrance to the Canal. 

It raced there under forced draught. It sur- 
prised and destroyed an inferior force of 
cruisers and battleships that the enemy had sta- 
tioned there for blockade. Again it was mathe- 
matics. The foe, forced to assure himself 
against attack on his transports off the New 
England coast, had held all his powerful ships 
north of the American fleet. The weaker block- 
aders in the South, facing guns of superior 
range, ships of superior speed, and superior 
volume of gun-fire, went down to destruction 
without even the satisfaction of biting hard as 
they died. 

Now the country that had been sick with hu- 
miliation because its navy would not fight, 
thanked Heaven that the fleet had kept itself in- 
tact : that instead of going down in glorious dis- 
aster, it had worked out a scientific problem 
coolly. The big navy, intact to its smallest tor- 
pedo boat, was lying fully potent under the 
strong defenses of Limon Harbor. 

The guns of the fortifications protected the 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 319 

ships, and the ships protected the fortifications. 
Three thousand naval officers and sixty thou- 
sand sailors and marines, added to the land 
forces in the defenses, made a force of highly 
trained, completely efficient men. 1 

The Defenses Perfect 

The defenses were perfect. This precious 
possession was one American possession at least 
that could be held to the last. Its guns were 
fully installed. It had ammunition. Its range 
finding systems and its systems of fire control 
were complete. Without the navy, it, too, would 
have been sorely weak in men and would have 
been open, like America's continental defenses, 
to attack from the land. But with the naval 
forces, it was able to hold out. 2 

The navy was ready to throw men ashore to 
meet any attempt at landings along the coast. 
The navy's torpedo boats and destroyers crept 
to sea in the night and guarded all weak places. 
The American submarines, with a safe harbor 

i Office of Naval Intelligence, July 1, 1914. 

2 Practical completion of battery construction and arma- 
ment, power plants, fire control, searchlight installation and 
supply of ammunition reported by Chief of Coast Artillery, 
September 19, 1914. 



320 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

for a base, worked under ideal submarine con- 
ditions. When the hostile navy, freed from the 
task of protecting its army, at last appeared in 
force off the Isthmus, it dared not institute any- 
thing like a close blockade. 

It dared not even venture in to bombard. 
There were 16-inch guns at Panama. It was an 
object lesson for the United States. Exactly 
thus, had there been an army to protect them, the 
Atlantic coast defenses could have defied any at- 
tempt from the sea to force a harbor. 

Hostile Navy Powerless 

The enemy navy, overwhelming as it was, 
could do nothing except to wait and watch. It 
cruised up and down, far out in the purple 
Caribbean. Its only trophies in the South were 
Porto Rico and the United States Naval station 
of Guantanamo in Cuba. It had taken the lat- 
ter by the simple method of steaming in, for this 
" naval station" was only an unfortified harbor. 3 

The news of Panama's safety was the first and 
only good news that had been given to the coun- 
try since the declaration of war. The relief 

3 Congress has appropriated comparatively little for the 
needs of Guantanamo Harbor. 



PKICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 321 

that it gave was so great that the people received 
almost with equanimity the news which followed 
— that word had come from spies of the arrival 
of more transports in Boston Harbor and Nar- 
ragansett Bay, bringing forces estimated at 
figures varying from 50,000 to 100,000 more 
men. 

Soon after this landing had been accom- 
plished, cavalry and light artillery moved north- 
ward through Vermont. They seized and occu- 
pied in force Bellows Falls and the White Eiver, 
Wells Eiver and St. Johnsbury Junctions of the 
Vermont railroads. This cut the last com- 
munication of New England with the United 
States. It gave the invader absolute command 
of the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Rail- 
road, the Central Vermont, the Maine Central, 
the Boston and Maine and the Rutland branch 
railroads. Maine, New Hampshire and Ver- 
mont were in his power like the rest of New 
England. Blockaded from the sea, and cut off 
from railroad connection with the interior, they 
were subjugated even without the unfolding of 
forces that now began through their area. 

Here, too, the invaders, despite their grown 
power, moved slowly, cautiously. They cut dis- 



322 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

tricts from each other, and occupied them one 
by one systematically, making united action by 
the population impossible even had it been feas- 
ible. By the simple method of disorganizing all 
the accustomed political and governmental af- 
filiations, they turned to their purpose the ever- 
present lack of coherence between State gov- 
ernments and city governments, township au- 
thorities and County authorities. The ma- 
chinery fell apart ; and the enemy dealt with the 
bits as he chose. 

The Conquest Complete 

The few big cities of the three States could 
offer no resistance. Within a few days the con- 
quest of all New England was complete. Not a 
word came out of it to the rest of the United 
States. The City of New York was equally 
sealed. Nothing was permitted to pass out of 
the gagged and fettered town. The messages 
that stormed at it were delivered to censors who 
did what they pleased with them, and passed 
practically none to the persons for whom they 
had been destined. 

In this sealed city, for the first time in men's 
memory, there were no crowds on the streets. 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 323 

Broadway from 59th Street to the Battery was 
almost naked of people by day and by night. 
Its electric signs were dark. Its hotels and 
theaters were all bnt dark. 

Whenever, by chance, people found them- 
selves in a given block in numbers sufficient to 
make a throng, there always was a hasty scat- 
tering, as if they feared to touch each other. As 
these little knots scattered, they cast swift 
glances of apprehension at the high roofs. 

There had been an official notice on the front 
pages of all the New York newspapers on the 
morning after the occupation : 

ALL ASSEMBLAGES OR GATHERINGS ON THE 
STREETS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN 

By Order of the Military Government. 4 

There was no threat as to penalty for infrac- 
tion. None was needed. The machine guns in 
all the towers and sky-scrapers were sufficient 
warning. 

The shape of the island on which the Borough 
of Manhattan lay, with immensely long straight 
streets running north and south through its nar- 
row width, made it a simple matter to isolate all 

4 Usually one of the first orders given to the occupants of 
occupied territory. 



324 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

sections in which there were populations who 
might become unruly. The crowded tenement 
districts of the East Side were cut off: from those 
in the West. They were separated into units 
within themselves. Very soon, the soldiers 
moved around the city with the ease of careless 
visitors. Officers, mounted and in automobiles, 
went where they pleased. They paid apparently 
no attention to the people, and these, in turn, 
could not guess anything that the conquerors had 
in mind or what would be their next act in the 
next minute. 

Surrounded by the Unknown 

The city's newspapers, like those of Boston 
and all New England, were controlled and edited 
by military censors. They were permitted to 
tell their readers nothing of importance. This 
utter ignorance in which the multitudes were 
kept, made them more helpless than did even 
the guns that watched them everywhere. 

It was a city surrounded, perpetually con- 
fronted and oppressed by the unknown. The 
veil of secrecy and silence was lifted only when 
newspapers or placards printed some new proc- 
lamation in formal, legal verbiage. 



PEICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 325 

The first one to be issued had proclaimed the 
occupation, and the institution of a Military 
Government. It had added that the existing 
civil authorities had been empowered and 
ordered to continue their administration with 
the sanction and participation of the Military 
Government, and that all civil and criminal laws 
remained in effect subject to changes demanded 
by military exigency. 5 

But immediately under this announcement 
was a paragraph headed : 

LAWS SUSPENDED 

On and after this date the following Classes of Laws are 
Suspended. (1) The Right to Bear Arms. (2) The 
Right of Suffrage. (3) The Right of Assemblage. (4) 
The Right to Publish Newspapers or Circulate Other Mat- 
ter. (5) The Right to Quit Occupied Territory or Travel 
Freely in same. 6 

Another announcement that struck home after 
the people saw its real meaning under its smooth 
wording was : 

"The municipal and other civil and criminal laws as ad- 
ministered by the civil authorities, are for the benefit and 

6 The practice laid down for our own army and followed in 
the Insular campaigns. 

e Paragraph 301, Rules of Land Warfare, U. S. A., 1914. 



326 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

protection of the civilian population. Their continued en- 
forcement is not for the protection or control of officers 
and soldiers of the Occupying Army, who are subject to 
the Rules of War, and amenable only to their own Military 
Government." 7 

At first this announcement seemed to the citi- 
zens to be for their protection, but the sharper 
readers soon pointed out that it was only a skill- 
ful way of intimating that the soldiers were 
above all the laws that controlled the conquered 
population. 

A Mysterious Flotilla 

A few days after the surrender, people along 
the water-front noticed a great movement of 
vessels. The big Fall River Line and other 
Sound steamers moved down the Upper Bay 
in long procession, with some steamships seized 
at the wharves. 

They were full of troops. Some of the ves- 
sels towed railroad floats with flat cars on which 
were lashed cannon so big that even from the 
shore the eye could perceive their unusual size. 
Other craft towed strings of small scows, and 
still others towed floating derricks. 

7 This is one of the rules accepted among all nations and 
followed by all armies. 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 327 

The flotilla passed down the Upper Bay, but 
it did not go out through the Narrows. It dis- 
appeared in the narrow water-way of the Kill 
von Kull that winds between Staten Island and 
the mainland of New Jersey, and connects with 
the Lower Harbor through Raritan Bay. 

The story of the mysterious flotilla spread 
quickly through a city whose lack of newspapers 
made its apprehensive curiosity only the more 
keen. Robbed of its news and bulletin service, 
the people, without any conscious plan, had or- 
ganized a news service of their own. They had 
fallen back on the primitive method of circulat- 
ing information from man to man. 

New York's "Bush Telegraph" 

Within twenty-four hours of the suppression 
of the liberty of its press, the highly modern, 
highly artificial city had in operation the same 
form of news-transmission that has so often 
puzzled and even awed travelers in savage lands. 
Under the sky-scrapers the "bush telegraph' ' 
carried its messages with almost the same as- 
tonishing swiftness as in the jungle. 

It was done by hasty whispers and by furtive 
conversation, for among the Orders and Regula- 



328 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

tions that were promulgated daily there was a 
little warning that severe punishment would be 
inflicted on any person who ' l spread false news, 
communicated the movement of land and sea 
forces, made noises or uttered outcries of a na- 
ture to disturb troops, or inspected, sketched, 
photographed or made descriptions of views on 
land or sea without authority. ' ' 8 

There were enough ominous elasticity and in- 
clusiveness in this Order to cover almost any 
exchange of words. Yet men, even though they 
were mortally afraid while they did it, could not 
resist the human impulse to transmit anything 
that they learned. 

The news merely puzzled the great mass of 
the population. Accustomed all their lives to 
turn to their newspapers for knowledge about 
everything, they were quite helpless with their 
one means of enlightenment shut off. 

To Open the Harbor 

The Citizens ' Committee and the city officials, 
however, were able to guess pretty clearly what 
this movement of troops and heavy artillery 

8 Issued during the Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria and 
cited by recent writers as acknowledged precedents. 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 329 

meant. There was nothing in the lower harbor 
that possibly could demand such force except 
one place — the forts on Sandy Hook, the last re- 
maining harbor defense that still was under the 
American flag. Solitary though it was, so long 
as it remained intact it forbade the entrance of 
New York Harbor to any hostile vessel. 

There had been wonder before because the 
enemy commander had not demanded the sur- 
render of the Sandy Hook defenses under 
threat of bombarding the city, as he had de- 
manded and forced the surrender of Forts Ham- 
ilton and Wadsworth. 

" Because Sandy Hook is not within the city, 
as the other two forts were," was the solution 
at which the city's lawyers arrived, after con- 
sidering the rules governing military action. 
' ' The invader plainly is adhering carefully to all 
the accepted Rules of War. By doing so, he can, 
and does, hold us to account rigorously under 
the same Rules. This is profitable to him, for 
despite all their apparent stipulations in favor 
of a conquered territory, the Rules of War are 
made, after all, to facilitate war." 

It was impossible to warn the commander at 
Sandy Hook. Private service over the tele- 



330 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

phone and telegraph systems was suspended en- 
tirely. The fire alarm system was operated un- 
der the watchful control of soldiers. In Police 
Headquarters sat a Colonel of Cavalry whose 
countersign was necessary for every order is- 
sued by the Police Commissioner. 

This was a stern officer, who held the police 
force in a hard, masterful hand. The men were 
accountable more than ever for strict enforce- 
ment of all laws, but they were subject also 
to summary control by every military officer. 
Even guards and posts of private soldiers had 
some authority over them. 

There were many daily experiences and sights 
in their streets that served to make the people 
tractable, but few things were so powerful as 
the daily spectacle of their pugnacious police 
yielding sullen but complete obedience. 

" It is unlawful to disobey orders given by our 
army." This short regulation covered a great 
deal. It tied the police and the citizens hand 
and foot. 9 

9 "While a military government continues as an instrument 
of warfare, used to promote the objects of invasion, its powers 
are practically boundless." — Magoon, Law of Civil Govern- 
ment under Military Occupation, U. S. Bureau of Insular 
Affairs. 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 331 

Taking of Sandy Hook 

On Sandy Hook, fifteen miles down the har- 
bor from the Battery, there were being demon- 
strated the inexorable mathematics of war that 
had been demonstrated at Narragansett, at Bos- 
ton, at Forts Schuyler and Slocum in Westches- 
ter, and at Fort Totten in Long Ig. lr, 7\d. 

Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook, almost invul- 
nerable to ship-attack from the sea, was being 
reduced from the land. The fort commander 
had disposed his men in the most formidable po- 
sitions possible, and they made the narrow sandy 
neck of the Hook that led from the mainland to 
their fortifications a pass that no force, however 
contemptuous of death, would attack hastily. 
Barb wire and great sand mounds, rapid fire 
guns and big guns behind them, made them no 
despicable sentinels. But the Americans num- 
bered companies where the enemy numbered bat- 
talions and regiments. The American mobile 
guns numbered pairs where the enemy's artil- 
lery was counted by dozens. 

The steel mass of fort that could protect har- 
bor and city could not protect itself. The mot- 
ley flotilla, emerging into Raritan Bay, landed 



332 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

its men on the New Jersey shore at Keyport in- 
side of the lower harbor, and behind Sandy 
Hook. The defenses had not been devised or 
built to withstand attack from their own bay. 
The great rifled guns and the steel mortars were 
ponderous. They were mounted on complex en- 
gines, equally ponderous, whose bases were 
firmly anchored in concrete and steel. These 
mammoths were not things that could be swung 
around to all points of the compass. They were 
set in their solid beds for the one purpose of 
fighting things out at sea. 

The Open Bach of the Fort 

The commander had succeeded, with desper- 
ate labor, by blasting away concrete emplace- 
ments and facings, in turning two of his big guns 
around to face the land and protect the open 
back of the fort. But the giant steel guns with 
their 1,000-pound projectiles that could fight 
30,000-ton battleships, could not fight little two- 
legged men. They might, by chance of fortune, 
find and destroy one of the siege guns that were 
attacking them. But if they missed a gun and 
fell merely among soldiers, they would be 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 333 

scarcely more murderous than a little field gun 
that fires bursting charges or shrapnel. 

The enemy did not try to rush the works. He 
had time and means and did not need to sacrifice 
men. To the heights of the Atlantic and Nave- 
sink Highlands, that ascend so strangely out of 
the sea and out of the flat-sea country there, he 
lifted guns of great caliber. He placed guns in 
cover behind every undulation. When he had 
placed all these weapons with scientific pre- 
cision, they began to fire. 

None of the mobile artillery installed for the 
defense of the fort against land attack could 
reach the invaders' heavier artillery with any 
hope of effect. The men in the defenses, cower- 
ing under bomb-proofs and in pits, held out for 
a day and a night. They held out for another 
day. Then there was nothing left to defend. 
Dismounted and broken, their armament was de- 
stroyed. The survivors surrendered. 

New York City did not know that the Sandy 
Hook defenses had fallen till three light enemy 
cruisers appeared in the upper bay and steamed 
through the East River to the Navy Yard. 
Then the city knew that its harbor was open. 



334 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

Enemy Invades New Jersey 

The army that took Sandy Hook did not re- 
turn to New York. The flotilla took the troops 
and their light artillery aboard at the Atlantic 
Highlands, and steamed back through Raritan 
Bay, through the narrow sound behind Staten 
Island and into Newark Bay. Here other boats 
met it with cavalry and motor troops from 
Yonkers. 

Troops landed at both sides of the entrance to 
the bay, taking Bayonne and Elizabethport, with 
their oil refineries and tanks, and their ship 
yards. Then the flotilla moved up the bay, and 
put great bodies of soldiers of all arms ashore 
at the great factory town of Newark. A big 
city, and a difficult city to control, it kept the 
commanders occupied for three days before they 
had made their footing good ; but then it was an 
admirable and a vastly valuable base. From it 
the troops spread out and took Rutherford, Pas- 
saic, Hackensack, and Paterson. 

It was rich commercial territory that comple- 
mented the value of possessing New York, for 
these factory cities were a part of the Metropoli- 
tan District counted with New York City in 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 335 

every National estimate of industrial wealth. 
This district contained almost thirty-two thou- 
sand factories. In wealth and productiveness, 
it was as choice a prize as New England. 10 

Army Ceases Operations 

Having made good its hold on the new con- 
quest across the Hudson Eiver, the invading 
army ceased to expand. Even with the accre- 
tion that had been made to its forces, it had 
none to spare for further operations, for it now 
had under its charge 62,000 square miles of do- 
main with more than thirty millions of people. 

This was a Kingdom. The victor set himself 
to the task of organizing his government, which 
meant the task of turning it to profit. 

From the beginning, he had taught the con- 
quered people that an invading army lives on the 
country. Wherever his troops entered, the in- 
habitants were ordered to supply all that was 
needed by men and horses. 

The occupying troops demanded lodgings and 

10 Table 4, 13th Census, Volume 8. The Metropolitan Dis- 
trict, as referred to in this sense, comprises Greater New York 
and the New Jersey manufacturing counties that contain 
Newark, Bayonne, Paterson, Hackensack, Passaic, Rutherford, 
etc. 



336 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

stable-room. They demanded accommodations 
for everything belonging to the army. They 
requisitioned fuel and straw. They called for 
teams, cars, motors, wagons, boats, and claimed 
the services of their owners. They occupied 
flour mills and bakeries. They took machinery, 
material, tools and equipment for repairing 
their munitions of war, bridges, and roads. 11 

In all the towns they seized parts of the hos- 
pitals and set them aside for the care of their 
men, impressing the hospital attendants into the 
service. For the use of their own medical serv- 
ice they forced the towns to contribute drugs and 
medicines. 

They seized all appliances on land, on water 
or in the air that might serve for the transmis- 
sion of news. Under the allegation that they 
were susceptible of use in war, they took all sorts 
of subjects of peaceful commerce or industry, 
from telegraph wire to houses. 12 

11 Spaight, an authority, says that "practically everything 
under the sun" may be requisitioned and cites the case of a 
boot- jack being demanded for army use. See quotation and 
rulings of U. S. Army. 

12 Under Hague Rule, Article LIII, it is held that "every- 
thing susceptible of military use" may be requisitioned, and 
modern army practice defines this as meaning anything from 
telegraph wire to canal boats. 



PEICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 337 

Putting on the Screws 

Already they had subjected Boston to a levy 
of $50,000 a day for the maintenance of the 
troops. They laid on New York and the factory 
cities of New Jersey a joint levy of $100,000. 
They laid another impost for the same purpose 
on the big cities of New England of seventy-five 
thousand. This one levy alone amounted to 
1 million, 575 thousand dollars a week; and it 
was only one of many. 13 

They confiscated outright all the cash, funds, 
realizable securities and notes belonging to the 
state, city and local governments. Every bank 
was warned under threat of condign punishment 
to deliver over everything that might be consid- 
ered public property. In New York City they 
seized from a bank $100,000 that was deposited 
by a State Department to pay a draft ; and they 
issued a warning that if the holder of the draft 
attempted to collect the amount or permitted it 
to pass from his possession, his house and lands 
would be confiscated. 14 

is Not a large sum as compared with some imposts laid on 
quite small and unimportant towns in wars during the past 
century. One such levy was $1,000,000 from one town in 
one day, according to European writers. 

i*See case of seizure by Major General Otis of $100,000 



338 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

They declared themselves possessed as abso- 
lute owners by right of conquest of all public 
property besides cash. Thus in New York they 
asserted ownership of ninety-nine million dol- 
lars ' worth of suspension bridges and in Boston 
they took bridges to the value of ten and a quar- 
ter millions. They took the New York City 
armories valued at fifteen millions. They de- 
clared that they owned the subways valued at 
100 millions. 

All United States property, comprising forti- 
fications everywhere in the conquered territory, 
navy yards, post offices, customs houses, light- 
houses, treasury buildings, and court houses 
were listed in proclamations throughout the oc- 
cupied country as good and legal prizes of war. 
The property so seized in the city of New York 
alone amounted to sixty-six millions. 15 

Working Furiously for Defense 

The United States was working furiously for 
defense. In the steel country of Pennsylvania 

from Philippine bankers, being money owned by insurgents 
and payable on presentation of a draft held by insurgents. 
Report, Charles E. Magoon, Law Officer, Division of Insular 
Affairs, 1902. 

is List of non-assessable Federal property, N. Y., 1914. 



PEICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 339 

and the West, all the works were being altered 
to turn them into factories for shells, shrapnel, 
big guns and gun carriages. At Watervliet and 
Indian Head the capacity of the shops had been 
enlarged immensely and there was not a moment 
in the day or the night when there was a pause 
in the headlong labor. Powder was being made 
in the Middle West, in places safe from any pos- 
sible attack by aeroplanes. The flying machine 
works of Hammondsport, and Buffalo, in New 
York, San Diego, and Overland Park, were 
turning out machines at the rate of one and 
sometimes two a month. Half a dozen other 
factories were being erected. 16 

A group of automobile factories had agreed 
to turn out 2-ton trucks at the rate of forty a 
day, and, indeed, already were producing thirty 
a day. One concern was working under a con- 
tract to produce enough automobiles every day 
to carry one regiment, each machine capable of 
making 100 miles an hour with four men and ten 
days' rations of food and ammunition. Others 
had agreed between them to produce enough 

is At present it is considered that one military flying ma- 
chine in two months is good speed of production. 



340 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

motors in every working day to carry five or six 
regiments. 17 

The Handicap of Unpreparedness 

The efficient land was rising to the occasion 
with magnificent ability and temper. So far, 
those were justified who had said that America 
could meet a crisis with miraculous speed. But 
there were things that could not be met with 
speed — and these things were vital. 

All the industrial efficiency on the land could 
not provide 35,000 trained and experienced offi- 
cers : and that number was needed if the country 
was to put half a million volunteers into the 
field. 

All the efficiency of men and engines could 
not correct, except by tedious, slow training, the 
defects in an army system that had made it im- 
possible in peace times to concentrate 16,000 men 
and officers at the San Antonio border of Texas 
in less than three months after the order was 
issued. 18 

17 Result of inquiry made by U. S. Army after tests on 
Texas border had developed the high value of motor trucks 
for war. 

is Orders issued by War Department, March 6, 1911, for 
concentration at San Antonio, Texas, of maneuver division of 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 341 

All the efficiency could not alter the fact that 
of the whole militia force of trie United States, 
enrolled as "men armed with the rifle,' ' exclu- 
sive of the four divisions already with the army, 
there were only 24,000, or 38 per cent., who could 
shoot well enough to make them suitable for bat- 
tle purposes. 19 

The capture of Massachusetts and Connecti- 
cut had cut off at one blow the source of 68 per 
cent, of all the ammunition and weapon works of 
the United States. The army, already short of 
cartridges, would have to remain short till all 
the complicated and minutely accurate machin- 
ery for making them could be built and estab- 
lished. 20 

three infantry brigades, one field artillery brigade, an inde- 
pendent cavalry brigade and the necessary auxiliary troops. 
Strength should have been 15,669 officers and men. On March 
31 the division mustered only 11,254 men. On April 30 it 
had reached a strength of 12,598. On May 30 it numbered 
12,809. It never reached its full required strength and it did 
not reach its maximum actual strength until three months 
after it had been ordered out. On Feb. 21 and 24, 1913, three 
brigades of the second division were ordered to mobilize at 
Texas City and Galveston. This force did not reach its maxi- 
mum strength till June 30, 1913. See Report of Major Gen- 
eral Carter, U. S. A. 

is Table 26, page 262, Report, Chief of Division of Militia 
Affairs, U. S. A., October 1, 1914. 

zoCenstfs of Manufactures, U. S., 1910, 



342 THE INVASION OF AMEEICA 

There were only 425,000 rifles in reserve. 
The volunteers would have to drill without arms 
till factories could be put into operation. 

What Had Been Lost 

Seven militia mobilization camps were in the 
territory lost to the United States. One thou- 
sand acres of powder works in New Jersey were 
in the possession of the invaders. 

The volunteers needed shirts, breeches, un- 
derwear. The four leading cities in the manu- 
facture of cotton goods, the four that led in 
making woolen goods and the leaders in making 
clothing were cut off from the United States. 

The volunteers needed shoes. More than all, 
they needed shoes. Shoes, shoes, and again 
shoes! Americans realized with heavy hearts 
how these unromantic things were making them 
helpless — what a blow it had been to their de- 
fense when the great Massachusetts factories of 
Lynn, Brockton, Haverhill, and Boston with 
their un-replaceable machinery had been taken. 
These cities and cities scattered through the rest 
of lost New England, had produced 57 per cent, 
of the boots and shoes for the United States. 

The army was short, even under its old, eco- 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 343 

nomical estimates of more than 500 field artil- 
lery. To put the army of 300,000 volunteers 
into the field, it would need at least 1,500. In 
the days of peace it had been calculated that the 
shortage then existing could not he made good 
in less than two years. Now, with half a hun- 
dred factories toiling, with blackened Watervliet 
roaring and clanging as never a factory had 
labored before, guns were being turned out at 
a rate that promised to reach surprising dimen- 
sions when all the shops were fully at work. 

Six Months of Helplessness 

But at best there were six months during 
which nothing could be done except to prepare. 
During those six months, while the country 
poured forth its money prodigally to make up in 
wasteful speed what it had neglected during long 
years, the invader could sit in the conquered sea- 
board cities and suck them dry. 

Nothing on earth could alter it. The volun- 
teers had to learn everything. They had to 
learn to shoot, to survive slush and rain and 
cold, to dig trenches. They had to become 
hardened enough to march twenty and more 
miles a day with blankets, half a tent, frying 



344 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

pan, plate, knife, fork, water bottle, first aid 
kit, an emergency ration, an intrenching tool and 
bayonet, a heavy rifle and ninety heavy cart- 
ridges. 

The militia regiments had to be raised from 
peace strength to war strength. That meant 
that into every company of 65 trained or par- 
tially trained men there would have to be an 
influx of 85 utterly untrained ones who would, 
of course, instantly destroy the original effi- 
ciency of the organization till they were trained 
up to it. 21 

"Six months at the very lowest possible esti- 
mate !" said the Secretary of War. "And it 
will be six months of such work as this country 
never did before in its history. y ' 22 

Six Months of Bleeding 

"Six months with the North Atlantic Sea- 
board amputated/ ' said the President, "means 
six months of bleeding to death. ' ' 

Even without the mortal blow that was struck 
at the country's commerce by the locking of its 

21 Report, Brigadier General A. L. Mills, U. S. A., 1914. 

22 Secretary of War Garrison says: "It will require six 
months at the lowest possible estimate to equip, organize, train, 
drill and make ready our volunteers." 



PEICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 345 

Atlantic and Gulf ports, this severance of New 
England and the metropolitan district of 
New York did, indeed, cause a huge, bleeding 
wound. 

Of the seventy-five manufacturing cities of the 
United States whose manufactured product 
ranked highest in value and played the greatest 
part in the industrial wealth of the country, the 
invader possessed twenty-seven, or more than 
one-third. 

Fifty-six thousand manufacturing establish- 
ments were in his control. Those of the New 
England States had produced 30 per cent, of the 
total wealth of the country in manufactures. 
When they were cut off, the blow struck every 
human being in the continent who needed their 
products, and every human being who depended 
directly or indirectly on the income from their 
purchases of raw material. 

The United States had lost the source of 65 
per cent, of its woolen manufactures in value, 
48 per cent, of the cotton manufactures, 45 per 
cent, of the bronze and brass products. 

All the amounts involved were enormous. 
The annual value of the raw material used by 
the conquered territory was beyond 2 billion 



346 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

dollars. The value of the completed products 
was 5 billions, 642 millions. 23 

An Incalculable Prize 

The Nation, thus maimed, stared aghast at the 
value of the prize that had been wrested from it 
for lack of a little insurance. Its individuals 
had paid scrupulously each year for insurance 
against fire and crime and had scrutinized their 
policies with the utmost care. But they had per- 
mitted their chosen representatives in Legisla- 
tures and Congress to do as they chose about 
insuring against war, to spend money as they 
would or not at all, and to accept a worthless 
policy obtained at an extravagant price. 

Now they faced a loss that, for the time at 
least, might well be called total. The value of 
Boston and the city of New York alone in tax- 
able property was 9 billions and 880 millions. 
Five cities of Connecticut were worth 483 mil- 
lions. Massachusetts had 22 cities exclusive of 
Boston whose value was 1 billion and 415 mil- 
lions. Counting all New England, with New 
York and Boston, and leaving out the New Jer- 
sey conquest, the enemy's loot was 15 billions 

23 Census Bureau, Volume 8. 



PEICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 347 

and 386 millions, exclusive of the public city, 
State and Federal property that he had seized. 24 

What Can He Do With It? 

"But what can he do with it?" the people of 
the rest of the United States began to ask each 
other presently. 

Men had prophesied in the beginning that the 
conqueror with his guns turned on the great 
cities, would extort vast tribute under threat of 
leveling them. But there had swept through 
the land a spirit that would face anything rather 
than to purchase safety and ignoble peace. 
"Let him destroy the cities and all the land!" 
said America. "We will build the sea-board up 
again, better than before. We will recompense 
our fellow-citizens for every scrap that they 
lose. But we shall never pay blackmail!" 

Had the invader entertained any such plan, 
this spirit that flamed unmistakably through 
the continent would have daunted him. But he 
had no such puerile design as to turn his won- 
derful prize into ashes. If his errand was one 
of brigandage and robbery, it was brigandage 

24 From Tax Lists, New York City and Boston, and asses- 
sable values of New England, U. S. Census Bureau. 



348 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

and robbery in the most scientific modern 
terms. It was brigandage tbat enlisted in its 
conception and prosecution the brains of a 
world's financiers, the keen wit of a world's 
merchants who wanted to win back the markets 
of the earth and the far-sighted policy of inter- 
national diplomats. 

For almost a month the conqueror did not 
show his hand. For almost a month the sea- 
board from the end of Maine to New Jersey 
remained sealed. Then, suddenly, he gave the 
United States his reply to the question: "What 
Can He Do With It!" 

The Invader's Reply 

He opened the wires. He did not send out a 
word over them. The people of New England 
and New York did it. They sent out a flood of 
dispatches that were like a great cry for help. 
It was the invader's reply, through them. The 
reply was ' ' Starvation ! ' ' 

"We need coal! We need iron and steel! 
We need cotton ! ' ' cried the people of New Eng- 
land. "We have used up all our raw materials. 
We cannot work any longer unless you ship to 
us." 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 349 

"We must re-open our banks !" said Boston 
and New York and the hundred other cities. 
"We are paralyzed without our exchanges and 
relations with the financial system of the coun- 
try." 

"We need f oodstuffs ! ' ' said they all. 

The first quick decision of the country was one 
of wrathful refusal to furnish the supplies that 
the enemy might fatten himself. But the impor- 
tunities from the conquered places grew. They 
went to all the land, west and north and south. 
They came at the White House like a storm. 

"We are on the edge of panic! We have 
three millions of factory workers who will 
starve unless we can instantly reestablish our 
industries and our finances ! ' ' 

"It is intolerable !' ' said the President, his 
face white with anger. "It is simply a dis- 
guised form of blackmail. He means to make 
us finance him; for, of course, he will levy con- 
tributions on the country as soon as money be- 
gins to flow in. ' ' 

"He Has Us!" 

"He has us !" said the Secretary of the Treas- 
ury. " As we were helpless against his cannon, 



350 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

so we are helpless against the new weapon that 
he has drawn — the starvation of our own people. 
All the messages that we have received prove 
that. He has shown them that their fate is 
wholly in our hands — that if we refuse to send 
them money and foodstuffs and raw material, 
they will have to blame us for the conse- 
quences." 

The President of the United States arose. 
"Gentlemen," he said, "they are our own peo- 
ple. There is nothing else that we can do ! ' ' 25 

• ••••••• 

That is the story of The Invasion of America. 
There was nothing else that we could do ! 

How the land labored heart-breakingly to put 
an army into the field ; how the invader for eight 
long months held the conquered land, and under 
his efficient mastery made its soil produce 
prodigally, its manufactories pour forth their 
wealth in redoubled measure; how he laid tax 

25 Many so-called "non-intercourse acts" were passed during 
the Civil War. These authorized the President both to pro- 
hibit and to license and permit intercourse and trade with 
belligerent territory. Under these acts President Lincoln per- 
mitted the purchase of cotton in the south, and his procedure 
was upheld by the United States Supreme Court on the ground 
that "the United States has power to permit intercourse with 
an enemy during the time of war." 



PRICE THAT HAD TO BE PAID 351 

after tax on the men whose necks were under his 
foot; how, toward the end, he gathered his 
transports in all the harbors; and how, when 
three American armies, each 500,000 strong, 
began to move toward the coast from three 
grand bases, he embarked all his men within 
one hundred and twenty hours and sailed away 
unscathed — these things were but inevitable 
consequences. 

The United States of America never knew how 
much wealth the Conquestadore had squeezed 
from the conquered territory in requisitions, in 
fines, in license fees, in taxes on imports and ex- 
ports, and in war levies. Statisticians figured 
for years afterward to discover from the wildly 
tangled accounts how much he had extorted. 
They figured and quarreled for a generation 
over the vast amounts that the United States 
had lost by losing the markets of the world ; for 
when her ports were opened, she found that the 
markets were gone. 

Men said that from first to last the invading 
army had taken a sum not short of four billions 
of dollars. But whatever the sum, it was as 
nothing to the wound that had struck America 
near the heart — a brave Nation, a greatly capa- 



352 THE INVASION OF AMERICA 

ble Nation, made to grovel for her life because, 
in a world of men, she had failed to prepare for 
what men might do. 



THE END 



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